Tag: waste

#Three Line Tales: Waste

For Sonya’s weekly photo prompt
photo by Nareeta Martin via Unsplash

tltweek246

The family members heave themselves upright, swill greasy hands clean in the outgoing tide and wade heavily back to the car, renouncing their rights of ownership on the rubbish they no longer want.

Grease, cartons and bits of useless plastic, unwanted distractions for world-weary kids, curl into the waves, drawn out to sea until they hit another beach where a gull is waiting.

Bright eyes find the plastic chunk among the pebbles, gull pecks, tastes and brings the inestimable prize back to the hungry chick that will die some short time later in the agony of strangulation.

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In the balance

 

Will we see the balance tip one morning of no sun?

Or will it come a night of no stars?

 

Will we hear the silence of no birds

in the flowerless fields of no bees?

 

Will we tell these children the magic is all dead,

the warm sun, soft rain, elephants and polar bears all gone,

beauty squandered, wasted leaving none for them?

 

Will we even dare?

 

Or will we stick more glitter on our eyes

drink more lies from the fountain of no truth

and set out feet upon the path of no return?

The bells of hell

For the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt. We watched Oh What A Lovely War last night and the satire and poignancy was as keen as ever.

 

Bell voices ring

for the stolen ones

and their lost without trace

ghostly voices sing.

Their betters bid them serve

for their kin and king,

said for those who do their duty

death has no sting.

So they went and they died

and we watched them fly

with their white crosses

and their poppies

when their souls took wing,

but Haig like French

died peaceful in his bed,

like the stories of the millions

of expendable dead.

Unheard words

the_bewitched_mill_by_franz_marc_1913

The words pour out in blue torrents,

bright cascades shimm’ring with starlight,

rainbow-winged, skimming like swallows,

they cling to the brief, bright thrumming

of a heartbeat’s steady drumming,

all swept up in the fierce current,

rushing blindly into nightfall.

Catch the wild wind and enchain it,

for the tales it tells are worthless,

building dreams of dust and ashes,

that rain will wash to the river.

Night brings no balm to the weary,

nor with joy fills the shrivelled husk,

for red dawn breaks ever harder,

when the day will flow no farther

than the next dull clouded dusk.