Sunday December 1st, 2013

The exercise:

Welcome to December. Our writing word of the day is: remote.

Kat and I went out for a coffee and tea date this morning while Max hung out with Kat's parents. We're trying to make it a weekly outing now that things are settling in around here for the winter.

Speaking of which, apparently the expected high for Wednesday is -8, with an overnight low of -15.

Uh, I'm not ready for that quite yet, thanks.

Mine:

On an isolated mountain top
A lonely guru sits.
He stares blindly at the horizon,
At the end of his wits.

His thoughts stuck on a long ago scene
That just keeps on playing,
While he regrets every single thing
He remembers saying.

A living room filled with motes of dust
And screams escaping throats;
Just how long would the peace have lasted
If he'd kept the remote?

3 comments:

Greg said...

That sounds like a very civilised way to spend a morning, and I'm sure Max enjoyed getting to see his grandparents. Though with the temperatures you're describing, I hope you're wrapping up warm for these dates!
Poor guru, I can quite see why he's retreated to the wilderness after that. Perhaps it's best not to tell him that a standard approach to keeping control is to surrender the remote, but only after secretly taking the batteries out first. Oh, and nicely done, fitting two definitions of remote into one poem!

Remote
"Well doctor, I find his remoteness worrying." Judith leant in close to the guidance counsellor and added, "Look at him. I mean, he's just staring out of the window, and we're here for marriage guidance. What do I do?"
Dr. Fraud scribbled on his pad. He never wrote words, as that would require listening to his patients, but he'd noticed that they responded well to the writing. He was thinking of updating Pavlov's experiments using his patients and writing a paper on it.
"I think he's looking at his car," said Dr. Fraud after looking out of the window himself. "Have you looked out of the window, Miss...?"
"Mrs!" said Judith, her eyes nearly popping out of her head in astonished rage. "We're here for marriage counselling, Doctor! How could I be a Miss?"
"Very sorry," said Dr. Fraud letting his accent get much stronger. "Some people come with their mistresses, and you are so beautiful...."
Judith settled down a little more. "It's not his car anyway," she said. 'It's mine."
"It's on fire," said her husband. "You know dear, if you weren't so remote from the real world I'd be able to tell you these things without biting my head off all the time."

morganna said...

Another snatch from the future poetry project I want to work on
----------
Random voices drifting on the wind
He listens hard, seeming to hear his friends
Following the trail of sound, he hurries
Down the steep riverside cliff
Too late, he remembers his friends' fate
Now remote from all caring
The noise is four crows on the sand
Hopping around a body lying at the water's edge.

Marc said...

Greg - thanks! I was considering squeezing in a re-mote usage in there as well but it wasn't agreeable to the abuse.

Good to have a visit from Dr Fraud, as always. Branching out to marriage counseling, hmm? That can only have entertaining results... for us readers :)

Morganna - love the imagery in your final lines, and the build to them is very nicely executed. Good stuff!