Sunday March 4th, 2012

The exercise:

Your word for the day: blocked.

Greenhouse construction was going well this morning... right up until I realized there was a part missing. Sigh.

Will be contacting the manufacturer tomorrow. Hopefully they can send it relatively quickly. Otherwise, we'll just have to figure out how to make it work, either by making a suitable replacement or some other creative measures.

Mine:

This paralyzed pen
Will never dance again.
Words stumble and trip,
No songs escape its tip.

No stories to tell,
No poems as well,
No dreams or rages...
Just empty pages.

9 comments:

Greg said...

What part was missing then? Aren't greenhouses essentially metal frames and glass panels? Or is this a polytunnel or something more exotic? :)
I like the idea of a paralyzed pen, that's quite an evocative image. And the second verse is just fantastic. Great work!

Blocked
Giorgios stared at the job. On the docket it looked easy: fill in the hole so people can't slide down the pole. But now he was here, he was wondering if there'd been a mistake. For one thing, this was a fire station and filling in the hole didn't seem so clever. And for another thing, filling the hole in wasn't so straight-forward when there was whole room below.
He pulled his phone out and called the despatcher.
"Just do the job, Georgie," she said. "Just what it says on the ticket."
She hung up before he could try and explain why he thought it might be a bad idea. He stared at the phone, and then thrust it angrily back into his pocket. They wanted the hole filled in, he'd fill it in.
-----
"No ma'am, I'm sorry, there's no fire brigade service today. Someone's blocked all the trucks in with what looks like two tonnes of concrete...."

Anonymous said...

Noses,,
hoses,
pipes,
roads,
writers,
painters,
artists of all kinds,
inventors,
philosophers,
inspirers of many types,
when you're blocked - you're blocked,
give it a plumber and some time,
you'll fix it, fine.

Cathryn Leigh said...

@Marc - very elloquent

@Greg - that'll teach them!

@Writebite - nice. your rythm sort of inspired my peice.

Blocked
Water flowing down the river,
Gurgling around the rocks.
Ever flowing never ceasing,
Until one day it gets blocked.

Beaver damns, human damn,
They make the flow of water stop.
But ever reaching, never ceasing,
The river them flows over the top.

morganna said...

The words are there,
Trying to get out
Stuck inside my head --
A little boy keeps
Asking me questions!

Krystin Scott said...

@ Marc - The tale of the Green House was a big bummer..

I'm going to leave this shorty.
I'll make it longer on Protag. Had an eye dr appt this afternoon & the worlds fuzzy.

<>

Tick tock, hands move round the clock
But nothing makes it to the paper.
An hour’s passed. The plot’s a crock.
There is no real mystery to this caper.

Iron Bess said...

Oh my, I think I did my poem for the week, so I think I will just write until I don't want to anymore.

“The passage was definitely blocked I checked it myself at least three times,” I told Mya.

She dragged both hands through her hair before turning back to me. “Go check it again,” she said through her teeth. “If we don’t have a secondary escape route we’ll have to cancel the job.”

I could feel the heat of anger suffuse my face then gritted my teeth trying to stop my retort from escaping my lips. “I told you. I already checked it. It is blocked. We will have to find an alternate secondary escape route. I am not going to waste my time going back for a fourth check.”

Mya slammed her hand onto the table with enough force to rattle the entire surface. “Get your ass up there,” she shouted. We glared at each other for a full thirty seconds, then surprisingly, Mya dropped her gaze first. “So, I guess we cancel this job?” I started to mutter something under my breath. “Oh for fuck’s sakes, if you have something to say…”

“So we have one set back and that’s it?” I asked. We were all frustrated but I was getting sick of her self appointed role as group leader. “Or is it because now we have to change your plan you no longer want to go through with it? No one except the great Mya Robinson can come up with any ideas, is that it?”

“Listen, you little shit, if we don’t have every single contingency covered you may find yourself in jail for a very, very, long time. The police do not take kindly to bank robbery, even if it is committed by a bunch of librarians.”

Anonymous said...

So.

This must be how the rat feels when they've gone and changed the maze on him. Blocked off the paths that he had become used to and forced to scurry to and fro to find the new way out. This must be the way wolf feels in spring when the ice has melted and it realizes that it is on an island, far far from land. This is the feeling that descends on the Sunday school teacher when that precocious child has swept aside the pat answers with a terribly insightful and difficult question.

This is the sense you get when you come over the rise and see the highway before you lined with cars as far as the eye can see, not going anywhere. It must be the way that Astronauts feel after they've been strapped into their seats and watching the countdown when those red lights start blinking and speakers crackle to life and put an end to the launch.

What it is, is the feeling of the blank white page that seeps forward into your brain until it too is a blank white nothing.

Marc said...

Greg - the greenhouse was shipped in a box, with (supposedly) all the parts inside and instructions on how to fit it all together. The missing bit was meant to be part of one of the ten upright poles.

Thankfully they've put it in the mail today, so it should arrive soon.

That's one very dedicated contractor you've got there!

Writebite - that's excellent, well done!

Cathryn - loved it! Great rhythm, though I might have switched 'over the top' in the last line to just 'over top'. But maybe that's just me. Either way, great work!

Morganna - nothing worse than being stuck *and* being interrupted!

Krystin - ugh, I hate that blurriness after eye appointments.

Short but highly enjoyable. I shall seek out the full version on Protag.

Iron Bess - writing until you don't want to sounds like an excellent plan :D

Bank robbing librarians! I would totally read more of that.

GZ - fantastic. Just spot on with all those comparisons.

Anonymous said...

grondzilla...brilliant