Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Three Haiku (on Grief)

 Poetry Deadline #2 for 2024 is today. The assignment was to write three Haiku on one theme. 

I wrote on "grief."


Grief is no clear pane.

It’s a toy kaleidoscope –

With endless faces.

***

Grief storms my defense.

Now released, rivers of tears

Bring peace as they flow.

***

Allow tears their course.

Rolling down the face, they cleanse,

Washing grief away.


Wednesday, February 07, 2024

Three Limericks "The End"

 The first poem of 2024 was due today. I had written three limericks on the prompt "the end." I had a hard time deciding which to submit. I finally submitted the first two below.  

BIRTH OF A SHORT STORY

A lonely young writer from Creekbend

Wrote himself up a best friend.

Oh the fun that they had

‘Til one day he got mad

Killed his pal with a scribbled “The End.”

 

A lonely young novelist from Creekbend

Wrote himself up a best friend.

But when the writer felt scorned,

A short story was born

As he angrily scribbled “The End.”

 

A lonely young novelist from Creekbend

Wrote himself up a best friend.

But on the tenth page

He exploded in rage,

Killed his pal with a violent “The End.”


Wednesday, December 06, 2023

Remembered Thrills - A Poem

Today is the deadline for the last poem of 2023 in Deadlines for Writers. The prompt is "Thrill."  I found this a hard topic and ended up writing my poem late yesterday, determined to just have an entry, however lame, to submit. In late life, few people are still the thrill-seekers they might have been in their younger days. 

Remembered Thrills

It comes to me sometimes in my dreams -

Memory of carefree youth.

When life was all challenge and thrill and risk,

And death was intangible truth.

 

No dare was too great for omnipotent me -

No mountain too tall to climb;

No ocean or cavern too deep to explore

And be home before dinnertime.

 

“Fear? What’s fear? You’re kidding me, right?

It’s not too dark out there!”

I always believed if it came to that,

I could easily outrun a bear!

 

I no longer need a thrill a day.

I’m happy to dream thrills instead,

I don’t have to prove I’m alive anymore.

I take all my risks here in bed.


Wednesday, November 29, 2023

The Cost of Living

The last short story in the Deadlines for Writers Short Story group is due today. The prompt is "price" with a wordcount of exactly 300 words. Here is my entry. 

The Cost of Living

If there was anything Marti had learned in her twelve years of the chaos that was her homelife, it was that everything has a price. If she wanted supper, the cost was obeying Daddy’s drunken directives quickly and without giving him “any mouth.” If she wanted to go to sleep at night, she had to give away a little of her reasoning power and believe that the yelling she could hear, AGAIN, through the wall of her bedroom, was just the television.  Protecting her little brother had cost Marti a few false confessions and the enduring of punishments he had earned. She sometimes had to spend a little of her integrity and pretend to be at the library working on a project when she needed time with her friends.

Now, holding her hastily-packed bag in one hand and Billy’s hand in the other, Marti stood knee deep in the creek beyond the woods. The stinging skin on her behind and the ache in her jaw was beginning to numb now that they had almost outrun the echo of the back door banging like a gunshot behind them.

Marti and her little brother turned to look at the orange glow they’d left behind. Above the trees, smoke billowed up almost blocking the big glowing zero moon in the night sky.

“Are we going to Grandma’s?” Billy looked at Marti, wide-eyed with fear, but trusting.

“Mama will pick us up there when she gets off work,” Marti affirmed.

Having paid the price for their freedom, the children stood in silence. Devoid of any external comfort or human sound, the silence was deafening. Still Marti could hear the echo of her father’s last words on Earth, as belt in hand, he growled, “Stop crying like a baby, Girl! Just buck up and take it!”


Wednesday, November 08, 2023

Live a Little

 This month's poem was due today; the prompt was "little." This is the poem I submitted. 

Live a Little

The sturdy fence I built to guard my heart,

Went rogue and wrapped itself around my brain.

My thoughts imprisoned, snagged on barbs of fear,

Refused to free my soul to live again.

 

My stronger self took charge and fled the walls –

She stepped away from fearfulness and doubt.

She opened up the gates and took the risk

Of finding what real living’s all about. 

Saturday, November 04, 2023

Good and Faithful Servant

 In June of 2002, a friend and church member of ours at Douglasville United Methodist Church, E.G. (Kel) Kelley, wrote this: 

Good and Faithful Servant

To honor: Jim Turrentine, good and faithful servant. From Kel Kelley on the day after your surgery. We all love and miss you. Get well soon. I am certain that many of those in our congregation and in past congregations would, if given this recent gift that Abba Father has given me, write exactly the same words showing the same sentiments and heartfelt feelings. 

In the book of Ecclesiastes

There is a time for everything

A time to laugh, a time to cry,

A time to dance and sing.

There comes a time to honor,

From us who have been blessed,

You who have been a blessing

Always giving us your best. 


We know you'll say it wasn't you;

But God who lives within.

But we know that God uses willing vessels,

Godly women, righteous men.

For you this day we give Him praise

For the work He's done through you;

For the sharing of the gospel

And the times you've prayed us through.


You have listened to our troubles.

You have helped to calm our fears.

You have led us to our Savior

As you've loved us through the years

In joyous laughter and happy tears

We thank you for the time

You've spent with us as pastor

In Jesus's work divine.


Because you knew our Jesus,

Because you know our Lord,

You shared with us as needed

A gift worth more than gold.

One day we'll meet in glory

And we'll walk hand in hand.

We always knew that you'd be there.

Because you took a stand.


You visited in hospital and home

And prayed on bended knee.

Jesus said, "As you've done it to the least of these

You've also done to me."

Some day we'll rejoice as you're honored in heaven

In the presence of the Son.

Because you loved, because you cared,

"Well done," He'll say, "Well done!"

Lyn's Story about her 13th Birthday

 This was printed in the May 16, 1997 issue of the Mountain Echo {Fort Daniel Elementary School (Gwinnett County)} newsletter. Lyn was teaching 5th grade there the year she wrote this for the Birthday Spotlight.

It was my 13th birthday and I was opening gifts with my family when I unwrapped one of the most special gifts I've ever received. It was a square, flat present that I assumed was a record for the stereo that I had gotten for Christmas. However, inside the Gary Puckett and the Union Gap album jacket there was no such record, but an invitation.  To celebrate my becoming a teenager, my dad was inviting me on my first "date." It was an evening I'll never forget - just my dad and me. I got dressed up in a long light blue dress I had worn in my aunt's wedding and stood excitedly as Mom pinned a beautiful red carnation corsage on me.  We had reservations at a fancy restaurant, and that in itself was new and exciting to me. I'll never forget the feeling of walking proudly through the sea of tables to our seat on my dad's arm. I remember everything I had to eat that night, but the most wonderful part was the conversation. Through the entire evening I had my dad's undivided attention.  He listened to every word I said, laughed at all my jokes, and responded to me with enthusiasm equal to mine. He made me feel not only like an adult, but like a queen. To this day, that evening is one of the best gifts I've ever received.



Wednesday, November 01, 2023

One Life

 Short Story #11 for the year is due today. The prompt was "jerk", and I started there, but the final story doesn't have much connection with the prompt. The required word-count was 1250. Here's the story I submitted this morning.

One Life

Fred felt a sense of completion as he put the car in park and began the walk up to the porch of his and Teresa’s beautiful home. The mellow October sun warmed the air, a welcome change from the harsh summer ball of fire that had baked the ground all summer! He lifted his eyes to watch the play of the breeze in the trees on the hill.  Branches bent and swayed in hypnotic waves, shaking loose a flurry of brightly colored snowfall. The tranquility of the scene soothed the turmoil that had filled his world in the last few months.

Fred sank into one of the matching pair of rockers on the big new front porch. Closing his eyes, he remembered himself and Teresa just a year ago. They had been traveling home from the city and passed a sign “Estate Sale.” Impulsively they had driven up to the farmhouse and immediately noticed the two lovely old rocking chairs on the wraparound porch.

“These would be perfect on our porch, don’t you think?” Teresa motioned for Fred to sit in the rocker beside the one she had already claimed. That’s all it took. They bought the chairs.

Now Fred sat, alone, in one of the chairs, inviting the tranquil surroundings to calm and sooth the depression and anger that had begun with the insanity of 9/11/01. This iconic display of man’s brutality, the inconceivable horror of man’s inhumanity to man, coincided with his own personal 9/11. That was the day that a metaphorical airplane crashed into his happy heart, causing the twin towers of love and trust to crumble into dust.

Fred’s shoulders slumped; the beautiful scenery could only do so much. He was still a man alone, a man defeated. Fred stomped his feet, hoping that the solid thunk of the well-bult floor would give him the sense of security he needed, but he knew that he would never again have the peace that he had enjoyed before the towers fell.

He rose and walked to the top of the steps and leaned on the strong support columns. He felt Teresa standing beside him. How often had they talked about replacing the porch of their old house? Teresa had made the interior of the house a place of comfort, but the small and shabby front porch had been a project repeatedly postponed. As Fred’s eyes tracked the railing all the way to the side of the house, he smiled at the flower boxes Teresa had so lovingly tended on the old porch for years. They looked so much better on the welcoming new front entrance to their home. Everywhere he looked, he saw her. He could feel her, even smell her.

He remembered Teresa’s giddy excitement when he brought her home from the hospital last year to find her dream porch, which had materialized while she had been recovering from the accident. So grateful that his wife’s life had been spared in the accident, Fred had asked his friend and contractor, Ralph Adams, if it was possible to do the job while Teresa recovered. They already had plans drawn up, and Ralph seemed happy to help Fred construct the surprise.

Teresa had taken so much pleasure from the gift. Sitting there on the spacious porch with her friends, talking and laughing under the gentle ceiling fans, had been her greatest joy. As Fred stood there now, he remembered how he could feel her presence there in the long evenings of his grief. Sitting there, rocking and remembering those happy times had been his source of strength during the hardest nights of his grieving.

What an irony! Her longed-for renovation was barely finished when suddenly and unbelievably she was gone. Friends and relatives tried to help, but they didn’t really understand how perfect their lives had been. How can a man explain what it feels like to have love ripped from his heart? How can he describe the emptiness he senses just knowing that the other person is not, and never again will be, there. How can he make anyone understand that in the midst of life and love and blessings, unexpected twists of fate sometimes wait to totally destroy a man.

It was six months after her sudden and unexpected departure that Fred finally got the answers he needed. It took him that long to devise a plan to deal with this massive life change to be able to step into his future. Now he had finally completed all he needed to do to enable him to get on with what was left of his life.

Fred looked up when he heard a car crunching up the long driveway.

He was not surprised to see Otis Clark exiting the vehicle.

“Evenin’, Fred. How’re you doing?”

“Lot better than I have for the last six months. And you?”

“Well, I'll tell you, Fred, I've seen lots of better days. I guess you know why I'm here? It's about that Physical Therapist Teresa worked with after her accident.”

“Yeah. I’ve been expecting you. You saw the note I left at his place?”

Otis rested his hand on his sidearm casually. “Yeah. I saw it.”

When Fred didn’t respond, Otis continued, “Fred, I can understand your being upset; Hell, who wouldn’t be?! But there’s better ways, Man. Did you really think killing him would solve anything? And writing that note was a bad decision, Buddy. Signing your name and writing ‘PAID IN FULL’ -  was that really necessary?”

He paused, got no response from Fred, then continued, “You know the note implies premeditation.”

Wearily, Fred raised his eyes to meet his old friend’s. “Necessary? No, but I can't tell you how good it made me feel!”

The two old friends stood, looking at each other solemnly. Finally, Otis took a step closer, “You know what I got to do, Fred. No trouble, okay?”

Holding his gaze, Fred paused then spoke, “Otis, you're the sheriff, so do what you gotta do. You'll get no trouble from me. Thanks for coming yourself and not just sending your deputies.”

Stepping up beside his old friend, Otis said, “Let's go then. I'm not going to handcuff you. Do you need to get anything?”

“Nope. I’m ready. I put that packed bag by the door last night.”

Fred reached inside and picked up his bag, not bothering to shut the door as he walked back out. He did, however, take time to flip the overhead light switch. He began walking toward Otis, knowing that the timing device connected to the light switch would ignite the drum of gasoline in the crawl space in about an hour. Last step of the plan.

Otis and Fred walked to the car like they had many times in their long history together.

As Otis held the rear door of the police car for Fred, he paused. “I just gotta know, Fred, while it’s just us two old friends here, “Did you really have to shoot Teresa too? Was killing her for running off with the jerk worth it?”

“Well, Otis, I thought hard about it. It was really the only way.  And they can't execute me any more for two than they could for one.”