Wednesday February 25th, 2015

The exercise:

Write about: the puppet.

Spent most of the morning at the play cafe with Max while Kat ran some errands in Penticton. She picked us up and we went for lunch before running a couple more together and heading home.

I managed to use some of my time to myself this afternoon to get caught up on comments once again. That actually felt like an accomplishment, as posts without a response from myself were about to start heading onto the second page of the blog.

This evening we began the task of packing our things up, as tomorrow we return to Osoyoos. I'll be back here on Tuesday to finish cleaning and collecting whatever doesn't fit into the car this time, otherwise our time here is at an end.

We won't be in Osoyoos for very long though, because a week today we'll be leaving for Vancouver. We'll spend four or five nights there before going over to Vancouver Island to spend a week at my parents place.

Looking forward to reconnecting with friends and getting Max some more quality time with his Nana and Pop.

Mine:

In the black
Of this box
You cannot see
My purple socks,
And my pants
(A dark green)
Must remain
Sadly unseen.

It's lonely
Down in here;
Feels like it's
Been a year
Since the sun
Shined on me
And I smelled
The salty sea.

Surely soon
I will be freed
From this dark
Misery;
My master
Will finally come
To shove his hand
Right up my bum.

3 comments:

Greg said...

It feels like your time away from Osoyoos has gone quickly, but maybe to the people back there it seems like you've been gone forever :) I suspect it will be nice to not be trying to manage two homes, but that there will be things you miss about the place you're leaving.
Your poem is really quite amusing, for all of the horrific brutality at the end of th it. I feel quite sorry for your poor puppet!

The puppet
The thing in the chainglass cylinder looked vaguely humanoid, though there was definitely a hint of Jar-Jar Binks in there as well. Its face was beige and slightly furry, not entirely a camel's, and its skull had an elongated jaw like a horse. It had three eyes set in a pyramid, the third eye being classically where delusional humans thought their third eye was too. Its body was long and thin and its arms were longer than its legs; the tips of its fingers reached beyond its knees. Its feet, however, were tiny and hooflike, and appeared incapable of keeping it upright.
"This was part of the species known as the Aucoin Puppeteers" said the tour guide stopping in front of the cylinder. The children obligingly looked up and gasped, and at the back their teacher, Professor Snippet, paused from her review of spaceship schematics and suddenly paid attention. "They first made contact in the late 2400s, though it took nearly 80 years and two bloody civil wars before anyone realised what was happening. They prefer to infiltrate new species and use mind control to both learn about the new environment, and render it 'safe' for them. They appear to be extremely cautious, so that a 'safe' human was a dead one as far as they were concerned."
Professor Snippet raised a finger an inch, and the tour-guide found her eyes drawn to it. She swallowed, and asked, "Yes?" though her mouth was suddenly dry.
"Is this Puppeteer dead, or merely in stasis?"
"Statis," squeaked the tour-guide, absolutely certain that she shouldn't have answered.
"Good," said Professor Snippet. The children surged forward, a sudden, unstoppable tide, and the tour-guide found herself pinned down and tied up with the heavy velvet ropes intended to keep visitors from getting fried by the forcefields protecting the exhibits from them. Then two of the children produced toolboxes they shouldn't have been able to get through the security scanners and started turning off the security.
"What...?" managed the tourguide before a chloroform-soaked sock was pushed into her mouth.
"I think there are things we can learn here," said Professor Snippet. "And this is an educational trip...."

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you have a pretty busy couple of weeks ahead of you!

The Puppet:

My strings are invisible but
Strings they still are. They pierce
The hard skin of my hands, arms, legs,
And yank my limbs into motion.
Words fly out of my mouth but
Not of my own accord.

They don’t even sound like me.

I stare with my pleading eyes,
The only thing I still have control of,
To make you see he is controlling me,
That I can’t escape his wooden prison.
The real me is trapped within; all I want
Is freedom.

Why doesn’t anyone see it?

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, it seems to me that puppets have it pretty bad :(

I'm not sure what to think of that particular species being named after me... but I did enjoy the conclusion of your tale :)

Ivybennet - indeed! But hopefully good ones.

There's some great imagery and emotion in your poem. I really like the single line stanzas, especially the first one. Just a really well constructed and executed piece.