5 word challenge of: asphyxiation, sliver, smear, chalk, transcendent

chalk up to his ignorance the remark

of how becoming she looked tonight, 

after all that stress, frenetic fuss, a calmed

smear at peace, feminine in her distance

when internally asphyxiation gripped

each tiny sac of lung. packed around

encampment of open air, nerve set its

hobo sticks up to leave this confine

of stares of dark surrounding them.

it's a panic attack that she will flee once

paralysis lets her leave. so her poker face

has the transcendent look of Newton

given a concussion by apple tree limb

falling on his crown. who knew? the wood, 

the bark that dislodges who crawled under it. 

a fort this effort of sorting how normal was.

moving the tiring limbs, a sliver enters, 

is like hair almost breaking skin. soon 

ejected by the body, as protection routine.

automatic body function takes care of her.

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5 word challenging the "mess" media.

all that is aired is generic sex-symbol

the ubiquitous subway of cinema

has no pedantic crossing, no free

path of pedestrian, jay walking a

free thought, promulgating some

inappropriate snark. it's scrubbed of

ugly and is, for all the range of dollop,

all the unending melodrama, and

come ons of comedy, a flirt that

never falls to real, never deals

with daily inner places you know.

grating references of away, gritty

with stagelit arranged compression

fits symbolic tilt, iterations of victim

and hero and malevolent force, 

dramas of the same weight range

of made up women, mascaraed

in pan-national accent, i.e. middle

class California, primping to pimp

what isn't jarring, i.e. true to life

only what is shocking, what is norm

with the offensive parts torn out i.e.

if the joke falls flat, or if there's pervasive

lack of non-clever. a cleaver to those

sitting doing nothing active, unless spun

to bring predictable yuks or tears: the

clowns, helpless pap. no portrayal

of non-becoming tics. pack away

off camera the majority of hours

when one can't explain, where it

doesn't drive forward any plot, just

nebulous motion with speed spurts,

the years shrugged off, a remark

that misfits the person's character.

but here, the blonde rays of cloud, 

a strobe light into fireworks smoke,

a provincial tv for children. red-heads

allowed, black child if not too black,

mixed race ideal and a diversity of 

pug-nosed short ones in ungendered 

clothes disclosing no variance of class

people in chairs only if they are pretty. 

no hanging open mouths. no frenetic 

spontaneous oversugared shrieks.

editorial publication archival suicide 

to freaks in good sense of freak because

pablum is what makes us grow up strong.

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It had been wonderful.  The vacation she had always dreamed of, exactly as she had dreamed it – almost.  Paris was indeed the city of light, of romance, art and scene.  She had met someone.  He was short, intense, and beautiful and that would also serve to sum up their relationship.  Like a cliché, they met hailing a taxi.  He said, “No, no, I don’t wish to intrude.”  She had insisted.  They shared the same ride – all night.  It had cost a small fortune but she saw a Paris no other American tourist could claim to and not just the underbelly with its dark alleys and dubious but exhilarating nightclubs shadowed by the frame of the Eiffel Tower but tiny neighborhoods contained like a jewel in a Tiffany setting on streets that doubled back on themselves until she was lost, dizzy with champagne and charm and hormones.

It had been wonderful.  But now she was back in the States, knocked up, two months pregnant, still unable to make the phone call that would thrust itself into the routine of his day and maybe his life.  They hadn’t communicated since the day he left her at the airport, both of them making promises they wouldn’t keep.  They would keep in touch, they would meet in the fall, he would come to Wisconsin. Both knew it had been only a holiday romance but a holiday romance with repercussions, it turned out.  She pulled out a sheet of paper and an envelope, steadied her hand and wrote:

Dear Paul,
    I know how you can get a green card…

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5 Word Challenge: bezerk, frisbeetarianism, staycation, shituation, fud

I’ve always been a religious dabbler, an X-Catholic, a Jack Mormon, 10 minute Buddhist, a three whirl Dervish, but, honestly, who would have thought the Frisbeetarians were right?  And now here I am in this shituation:  soul stuck on the roof, in permanent staycation.  I mean, I can handle these things.  I’m resourceful and I’ve spent many a summer perfecting the English on a disk toss. But what’s my poor mother going to do when she gets here, good Presbyterian woman that she is?  It’s going to bring her to her knees and not in prayer.  Everything she believed – fud.  Bezerk.  She’s going to go bezerk, disembodied up here for all eternity trying to learn the subtleties of extreme frisbee, converting to Frisbeetarianism, and finding her salvation was only slightly further than her attic.  

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5 Word Challenge, Urban Dictionary Special: bezerk, frisbeetarianism, staycation, shituation, fud 

"BS at work is to be expected and tolerated. What makes a job intolerable is the UBS--Unnecessary Bull Shit." – Sophie

No money, no funny...hmm... (checking bank balance)... I can't see any flight but fancy taking off with me on it, anytime soon.

Sure, Copacabana would be nice about now, but my religion – frisbeetarianism – doesn't promise any glorious sunny paradise when I die of overwork, and job doesn't allow any decent length of vacation to allow me to chill out before I do keel over... 

Maybe tomorrow a good (cough-sputter) staycation with cat – stress leave (ahem) sick day – don't tell the office – just me and a bit of tetris and brownies, keeping the fud-slinging media turned and tuned out.

The phone'll be unplugged (shhhh, fever and migraine y'know) against whatever bezerk shituation flies at the work...it will just have to fly solo without my catching it. Maybe it will die quick and dull, like a summer fly, and drop without my swatting a sweat at it. 

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5 Word Challenge: bezerk, frisbeetarianism, staycation, shituation, fud

Reporting for WVOX, I'm Elentari.  Today, the leader of the extremest group FUD (Frisbeetarianists Unite for Destruction) went bezerk at the group's recent gathering.  During a speech to his followers, The Frisbee Lord (as he is known to his followers) spoke out about the importance of Frisbeetarianism and the continuation of FUD in the social psyche.  Though, halfway through his speech, he began screaming about the 'shituation' with the kite extremist group, the Kites Are Omnipresent (KAO).  Apparently, the KAO is strengthening and staging a staycation to fill the air with kites and effectively destroy the FUD's entire organization.  Mr. Frisbee Lord has been arrested and further details will follow in tonight's 10pm broadcast.  Stay tuned!  This is Elentari, reporting live for WVOX.

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We ripped all of the carpet our of our home the week that Suzanne was on jury duty and we ate rather shapeless pasta with meat sauce and whey for dinner.

That was a tough time.  The installers came in, stripped the top floor of the house bare, then began to make alterations to the floorboards while playing a terrible C&W station on the radio.  The twangy tunes definitely didn't make for nice ear candy when combined with the staccato of the nailgun.  Our cat Petie took refuge downstairs in my office in the corner behind my leather armchair. 

I didn't.  He proved smarter than I was.

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How it works: Write an entry of any length or style using five assigned words. Bold the five words. Tag your post with 5wordchallenge and any other tags you wish to add.

This week's challenge words: carpet, jury, pasta, shapeless, whey

Here's my entry:

The pasta provided as our evening meal -- and I'm using that term loosely -- is overcooked and watery. The alleged sauce is nothing more than a reddish liquid pooling like whey and threatening to swamp the paper plates as it drains from the mushy glop of lukewarm noodles. It's an unappetizing and shapeless mess. I'd just as soon skip it. My fellow jury members are tentatively digging in, hunger overcoming disgust for at least a few bites. The so-called chef should be called on the carpet. He's guilty of a greater crime than the defendant in our case.

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5 word challenge Group on Vox

http://challenge....

This is how it works: you get 5 words and with these 5 words you have to write an entry. The words might or might not be related. You decide how to combine them, and how long your entry will be. You tag your entry with 5wordchallenge and whatever other tags you like. Finally, you put the words in...

This week's challenge: carpet, jury, pasta, shapeless, whey

My apologies to Mother Goose.

Artist's rendering of the incident in question.

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider who sat down beside her,
and frightened Miss Muffet away.

Miss Muffet came back, with a big burlap sack,
shapeless and ragged and brown.
She started to sneak, and before it could squeak,
stuffed the spider inside with a frown.

As she stomped on the bag, her face started to sag,
as she realized the results of her fury.
Murder most foul, the public would howl,
and conviction by judge and by jury.

She snuck into her house, as soft as a mouse,
dragging the sack behind her.
Under the carpet she loved, she roughly shoved
the bag (complete with the spider).

She was cooking her dinner when something within her
made her sit down with a start.
The pasta au gratin lay burning, forgotten,
as the guilt grew and grew in her heart.

She went and got dressed, and promptly confessed
to Little Boy Blue down the lane.
Although he was shocked, his emotions all rocked,
sympathy to her he did feign.

They went for a stroll to see Old King Cole,
and find out what he would say.
That jolly old stinker threw her in the clinker,
and there still she spends all her days.

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Before stepping into another universe, lie quietly on the carpet, the rough, itchy kind that's good for cat naps, and scratching shoulder blades. Dreams are not a jury for the day's blame. Few dream of spite because they actually despise anyone, or perhaps they do. Me, I only want to dream in Spanish, Michel Thomas and I will tour Madrid and the French countryside. He'll have pasta; I'll have a good piece of fish, and I will convince him to tell me his true involvement in World War II. But when I swim back into this universe, I remember that Senor Thomas is quite shapeless, after 3 years of rot in the grave. I may hang a while, floating in the milky whey between these two worlds, where I can steal from the will of my subconscious, sharpen the dream to a point, and bring an old man back to life, until my eyes are open.

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This is how it works: you get 5 words and with these 5 words you have to write an entry. The words might or might not be related. You decide how to combine them, and how long your entry will be. You tag your entry with 5wordchallenge and whatever other tags you like. Finally, you put the words in bold.

This week's challenge: carpet, jury, pasta, shapeless, whey

The jury sat unmoving. Tension filled the air.

The whey sat in a bowl on the courtroom table.

Next to it a plate of dirty noodles.

At the prosecution table sat a woman, arms crossed at her chest.

It had been proven her child put down whey instead of milk for the family cat.

That issue would be dealt with later.

She couldn't believe it had come to this.

The courtroom door opened with a bang.

A shapeless man stood with the blinding sun behind him.

Finally, he stepped forward and her husband came into focus.

Then, he spoke...

"I confess. I spilled the pasta on the living room carpet."

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About this Group

Cleaning the carpet after our last argument (the one where I tipped the pasta, in lovely red sauce, into your lap, and you retaliated by upending the red wine over my head) I wondered why I bothered. 

This shapeless love we share.  Is it worth the rest?  Sometimes it feels as though our love is a cheese - you are the curds, and I am the whey.  Or is that the other whey round! 

Even in my head, I groan at that one. 

The jury remains out on should I go or should I stay - all I know is I don’t want to be cleaning any more bloody carpets!

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- Living out loud, man. Who we really are. There's no sweeping our true coyote natures under the carpet.

- Carpet tunnel syndrome wouldn't look like such a bad option from here.

- Wah, another cheesy joke? can't we curd this habit?

- No

- Where there's a will there's a whey.

- You know me. I've got to take everything whey too far. It would be a fusilli effort to even try to make me stop.

- So you're saying we're pasta point of no return?

- You're killing me.

- Judge, jury and executioner – we're understaffed as any charity case.

- Amorphous claim. 

- Shapeless as fish, battered 

- and feeling fried.

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How it works: Write an entry of any length or style using five assigned words. Bold the five words. Tag your post with 5wordchallenge and any other tags you wish to add.

This week's challenge words: original, surf, laughter, intentional, prepared

Here's my entry:

He sits a few yards above the tidemark, feet loosely buried under a cool caress of sand. The longer he stares at the endless cycle of rushing and retreating surf, the more his face relaxes, as if the water is simultaneously ironing away the worry lines as it smoothes out the sand. Getting himself to the water's edge was intentional; beyond that, he'd had no plan. Random meandering along the strand brought him to this particular patch of heaven, with the sound of children's laughter lilting on the breeze from somewhere out of sight. His life will change tonight. He's prepared: the reservations made, the words rehearsed, the ring secretly sparkling within its box, a heart brimming with love and hope. "Will you marry me?" may not be an original question, but he's about to ask it for the first and only time. He concentrates on emptying his mind, submerging himself in the sight, sound, and sensation of waves and sky, finding solace here as he always does.

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