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The Haunted Spaceship

(x = space)

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this was written to a prompt, requesting that we each write a flash horror story; I chose science fiction and verse

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The Haunted Spaceship

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How did it happen

Everything so new

It shone until it didn’t

Dials webbed over

Levers tarred

Footsteps on the ladders

No one there

A crew long dead

Remains reduced

To bones and ashes

What had happened

Smiles into cameras

Perfect launch

More smiles

Funding possibilities

Enhanced

First step into space

This far

To chase the satellites

That sang of Earth

Sending the best images

Of us

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So far away

Holo-communications

Brought them near

And we were glad to see them

The balanced crew

Representative

Diverse

And curious

Standing for nations newly

Treated into harmony

The fates of nations

Then

Riding along

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Voyager 9 had sent

A message as a surrogate

That said

Basically

Y’all come

X-y-z coordinates were sent

Along with certain helps

To make the journey

Doable and done

And so went

All Earth along

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And now a year or so

Into it

Passing a dark star in

Every way

Not foreseen

And then they started dying

Believing they were haunted

First

The ghosts in the machines

Entrails in food

Eyeballs in coffee

Someone did the research

On how to frighten Earthers

Locked in a ship

Passing through outer space

So far between worlds

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The air grew thin

According to the meters

Hallucinations thus enhanced

Even if they knew

They drew within themselves

And then took to each other

Unlocked weapons

Made their own

Attacked with nails

So well-manicured

Pretending claws

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The last two killed each other

There was no final message

The sun poured in

With unseen rays

Into chambers unadjusting

Atomizing everything

Except the ship

Become like consequences

Used to say

Of the breeder bomb

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A resource now

The Everest now rests

A peak in space

Of our adventure

It waits

Someone will come

From either place

Who knows

Or doesn’t know

What happened

And what happens now

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C L Couch

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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The Garden of Scheherazade

(x = space)

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The Garden of Scheherazade

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Imagine

An Arabian portico

A ceiling to the side

Under which is

Furniture with pillows

It is day

Then it is night

And in another place

Deeper inside

She meets with the husband

She volunteered to take

Even though

He is a maniac

Who kills after one night

To secure fidelity

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And so you tell a story

Recalling all the things you studied

Texts

Everything told you

By your father the vizier

By his advisors

Students

The servants of the house

And when allowed to wander

(covered up)

Making stories out of comments made

Along the streets

Of a desert country

With oases

And mountains

As well

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Legends

Narratives from

Math and philosophy

The history of men

(mostly men

aware of audience)

Through the ages

Sinbad

Aladdin

Ali Baba

So many more

Nearly three years’ worth

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Though it was the first night

That mattered

And the day that followed

Keeping life

By keeping the killer

Entertained

And then the second night

Made all the difference

And the third

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While you stood

Or sat

Or walked

The garden outside

The blood-filled palace

Deciding

Crafting

Revising

Each narrative

For the night

Aiming for salvation

For another day

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coda

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I don’t know why I think of this

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It

She

Came to me yesterday

Probably because

I was thinking about story

On its own

Not so much the content

But the abstract

And the purpose

The importance

The reality

A telling makes

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Maybe not

To life and limb

Bur all the stories she got to tell

We got to hear

That were in context

So much fighting

For her life

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C L Couch

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A Thousand and One Arabian Nights is a collection framed by the telling of stories by Scheherazade, the daughter of the vizier.  She volunteered against her father’s wish, naturally enough, to marry the king as a defensive measure for the women of the realm—and because the realm was losing all its women, at least those suitable for a king to marry.  Whatever suitable means, especially given the circumstances.  And as an overarching cause because the king whose first wife cheated on him and was summarily executed made in the king an attitude of mania regarding fidelity.  And so each day he would marry a virgin and then each night have her killed.  Scheherazade, who was not only skilled in storytelling but in story content, went to the king, married him, and entertained him on the first night with a story and then, because he wanted more, on the second night and so on.  The king found good stories more enticing than slaying wives, which I guess is some kind of virtue even in one we can’t overall admire.  Finally, the king’s madness broke or something like that happened; and he thought to keep Scheherazade as his one (and lasting) wife.

Well, it’s a story within stories.  Or I should say without. But it adds an edge in the telling and our hearing.  An added edge like that of a sword, perhaps that of an executioner.

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Photo by Arsalan Rad on Unsplash

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MS. Found in an Electric Bottle

(x = space)

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MS. Found in an Electric Bottle

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How do I keep

These?

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Mostly, they’re electrons now,

Some of these a day

Over some years

Now

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Shall I print them all,

Keep them like spells

Inside my crystal cave?

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Well,

Maybe

Maybe I should

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I can select from there

With those

To hope for publication

Or another egress

Out to you

To share

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My part in the circle

And the stars

And the spells

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We share our pages

With the magic words

That say

I’m here

With everyone

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Read us;

Hear us

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C L Couch

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“MS. Found in a Bottle,” a short story by Edgar Allan Poe

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Photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash

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prose poem about an—

(x = space)

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prose poem about an—

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–found and read a story about an angel.  A long time ago, I had a book of stories about angels.  As far as I know, I don’t have that book now; and I don’t know where I got it.  I don’t where I was when I read this story.  I seem to recall an institution-like place, a school cafeteria or something, though the light was not widespread and where it was was divided starkly between itself and shadow.  Maybe I’m imagining my imagining of the setting of the story.  This angel looked like a tramp.  He appeared in tattered clothes with a tattered raincoat over all.  He didn’t like where he was or that he had to look and feel this way.  I think he tended not to like his assignments all that much.  In this story, he saved someone; and I think he did this rather often, saving people.  At the moment just before salvation, he manifested as an angel.  As an angel should be.  He was majesty, all power and fear.  His wings were wide and they reached high.  There was great light through him (hmm, I guess he was depicted as male); and the evil in the story was overwhelmed, the human client rescued.  Afterward, he felt some contentment as an angel, though he knew he would be leaving and would be changing into whatever the next place and time required—not by his reckoning.  So he was about to leave and then—and this was the style of the writer—vanish in the middle of a–.

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this story was written I believe by Stephen Donaldson who has composed the chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever; if I’m wrong then I apologize all around; I don’t recall the name of the anthology or the particular story cited, and I don’t know who else wrote the other stories—the theme was angels, that’s what I know and that I often think of this story, this time strongly enough to set something down

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C L Couch

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Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash

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2 disclosing pieces

(x = space)

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2 disclosing pieces

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In the Mood

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I am not sure what

To say

I never am

There is an empty page

(there you are)

I look away sometimes

Then start to write

I say

What there is to say

My mind is on God

And hoping

Frankly

For a good day

In all persons

I and you and we

And shall God give us (all)

A good day

Or something like

Often the wish is

To have the means

To get through

The bad

The means material

And abstract

Miracles

Would be gladly received

Material and abstract

Material would mean

What

Money

Treasure in the cave

Or sometimes simply

(miraculously)

A way out

While abstract is a good thought

A steady faith the medium

For good thoughts

Hope

How about

Dealing here not there

Founding philosophies

Of virtue

Values

(life has value)

Everything based on a directive

To

Love and be loved

Meaning

And gratitude

And when everything is wrecked

What seems what must be

The chance for living well

Living at all

Around us

Or inside us

Due to wrecks

Outside inside

Inside outside

War and the fear of war

Fire

Ruined ground

Where there was verdure

Even where we used to live

Our habitats

Are gone

With how we thought

To be social

To be at all well-knit inside

There are wounds

With the pain and stress

In healing, too

The burdens and ennui

Of getting by

At best

When we need something better

In both places

External

And internal

Grant us peace

Grant us hope

Grant us enough satiation

We could day

This day was gratefully asked for

And received

Thank you

Divinity

Each other

And ourselves

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A String of Pearls

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For me when I was young

A horn was

Chosen

For me by someone

Who

Merely looked

At my lips

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Whose sound

(the horn)

I liked

But did not to play

Success was only in first chair (first)

Driven to drive

And park there,

Which I did

I could have been

First second

Or given up

Not bothered in the first place

Maybe piano

Sung instead

Once I discovered these

And then for me

The joy in conducting

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I could have compromised

With the world

Stayed quiet

When

Go noisy

When not

Stopped being told to settle down

As if Greeley were talking to

A young man in the east

Contemplating west

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I could have had

A few things that I liked

Not so many things

That broke too easily

Things

Of all kinds

Or I could have learned more

Experimented

With taking parts of things I had

To meld

Them into the new and odd

Setting an eccentric path

On which I find

Or receive

Pieces on the way

Look, feel

For beauty in what’s there

What might be the possibilities

In new combinations

New whole things

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Had I adolesced this way

I’d be on a weird way,

I suppose

Accepted enough by the world

With all my second places

On a creative way

Releasing rock

You know

From the unformed statue

Or other work

For senses

And appreciation

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Thanks

How about

Safe drinks all around

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C L Couch

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Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash

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titles of Big Band songs made popular by Glenn Miller (Glenn Miller and His Orchestra)

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Till We Have Faces

(x = space)

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Till We Have Faces

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Black History Month begins

Black experience

Recorded

Call it Black experience month

Black testimony

Black story

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Till

Evers

Amistad

Empires in Africa

Black and white

Greedy

Murderous

Raid

Take

Transport

Sell

And so begins a nation

You may say that others did it, too

So what

So fucking what

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We have a month to cringe

A month to listen

Get it right

Fix something small

Fix something huge

Enormous

Like a nation

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C L Couch

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Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

HDR shot of a sunset over downtown Memphis with the pyramid and bridge.

Memphis, TN, USA

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First Page of Every Book

(x = space)

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First Page of Every Book

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What might God say

But that

There was a word

The word in fact

Was God

And in our words

God breathes

And the making of the Earth

Was God’s

And our keeping

Or rejecting

Is our own

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This from opening

The gospel

Pick a book of books

For all the horror

The unmaking

The possessing

And abandoning

Of spirits

We say good news

Inhabits

And abounds

Hope for ourselves

The grownups

And the children

Hope for the world

Of people

And of ground and water

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For in the beginning

Was a word

Beside all words

It was love

And inspiration

Breath of God

And God

A word that made

From nothing

Gave us

Everything

With the proviso of

Two trees

And one rule

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So much for that

We’re here as are here

There is hope left

In the box

Made of word perhaps

And this its second purpose

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So many stories

Now

For elucidation

And companionship

Upon the journey

In the other way

From a detail of

A flaming sentinel

An ersatz beacon

Showing us

The way

We may not go

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C L Couch

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Photo by Andrew A on Unsplash

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Someone Said a Pearl for a Harbor

(x = space)

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Someone Said a Pearl for a Harbor

(7 December 1941, an invocation)

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Whom shall we honor

Today?

The citizens of Hawaii

Who died then

For strategy

On two sides

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The crews

Of small submarines

That tried to get through

And sank somewhere

Close by

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Mostly, the soldiers

We should honor

For the loss of life,

By the by material

That could (by the by)

Cost a war

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Honor convictions?

How shall they be

Dispersed?

On either side,

There might be recognition

Even under actions

Worse for horror and

A lack of declaration

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I don’t know,

There were people everywhere:

Many termed the enemy

Who were not in any way

An enemy

Taken to camps

Frankly

For looking different

(I say exotic and

of the USA—the

ubiquitous they

say the difference

lay in espionage,

so we became

the creepers

and the judges);

We hadn’t done so

To the urban Germans here

Or in our suburbs,

On the farms

Or to the Italians

Though I wouldn’t be surprised

To hear

They weren’t treated well

In the environs

Of duration

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We sent to camps

Then tried not to think

Some more about

Walled and shadowed camps

Turning into

Many of our own

For racist reasons;

We could have tasked

The FBI, the OSS

Instead

For their investigations

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There is a danger

That the battleship memorial

Might slide into the water,

As it placed one way or another

Over tombs

Of flesh and rust

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I’d hate for that happen,

For we need remembrance

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We need to remember

Many things:

God and our conscience

Make it so

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Recalling sudden loss of life,

A shining, lethal campaign of

Surprise

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Oh, we should be careful:

Watch our shores,

Keep our early systems

Early,

Though we need no longer

Look to the right and left

For enemies

Since looking right and left

Shall land on every one

Of us

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And what’s left of united?

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My families

Fought inside this war

That we remember;

Some could still

Tell stories

That tend to

Try the young to hear

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On this day remember, then—those

Who could see and hear

And taste and touch,

Who suddenly

Lost all the senses

Along with mortal life,

The joy of daily living

In a paradise

We tried to covet

For a paradise

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Farewell, we may salute

And say

All those

Who cannot call out

Except for memory,

Call out

For each other

In the fire

And the smoke

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And the few remaining

Now

Who would

Can tell us

Of the hours

And the aftermath

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Times and

Experiences

That

Soldiers, sailors, flyers—on

The ground, on deck, or in the air—

Mechanics and KP,

Bystanders

Try not to talk about

So much

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C L Couch

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Photo by Kyle Chicoine on Unsplash

Birds by the Bay

Ocean Shores, United States

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Story Time, Please

(x = space)

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Story Time, Please

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Oof, I’m tired

Aren’t you tired?

If you’re energized, please

Let me know

Maybe chocolate

Inspiration from a movie

Or a book

An entertaining story

From someone who

Tells stories well

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I like storytelling

I like listening

I like to think of people

Gathered ‘round tended fires

From ancient times

To hear from a bard

(roving poet)

Some other teller

Adding historically to lore

More urgently, to move us

With the tried

Or taking chances

Now

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C L Couch

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Photo by Obed Hernández on Unsplash

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