The exercise:
Write about: the infection.
With only two days off this week, the focus for me needs to be on rest. So I stayed home this morning while Kat took the boys to the park and after lunch I let Max watch videos on the tablet for a while during Miles' nap.
Max is enjoying Peppa Pig these days, so it could have been worse.
Also caught up a bit on comments. The backlog is once again miserable, but I'm trying. At least the yearlong prompt is now an option, as I managed to read last month's entries. Maybe expect that on Sunday?
Mine:
It spread quickly,
Faster than any of us
Could have imagined possible.
Is it too late to halt the onslaught?
Perhaps, but we still cling to hope,
Despite all the lessons he's taught.
We can still turn things around -
This world is not yet dust.
So we wage war on hate,
Our eyes on the prize:
To unseat the D. T.
3 comments:
Peppa Pig is one of the more normal children's shows right? It seems like since the 60s there's been a subset of kids TV that can only have been inspired by a hefty dose of LSD in the office watercooler ("In the Night Garden", "Magic Roundabout", etc.) I'm not complaining, I'm just amused :)
I think you've done an excellent job of catching up on comments: it's no longer quicker for me just to adjust the dates in the URL to find where you left off. So well done!
I like the structure and shape of the poem, though I found myself a little lost as to what the infection was -- for me, DT is Delerium Tremens and that doesn't fit with the rest of the poem. So overall a good poem, but if you could say what DT means I'd be very grateful!
The infection
Madeleine left Kieran's office, her smile still playing around her lips. She closed the door behind her, but didn't relock it. Kieran stood up immediately, restless and nervous. Madeleine hadn't got to where she was without being talented and very, very clever but she scared him. And although she was treating him as a protégé he worried that he wasn't really able to keep up. The screams from the meeting room echoed unpleasantly inside his head again, and he swallowed.
He paced from one end of the office to the other, about five steps in each direction, but it wasn't enough. He considered grabbing his gym bag from the other lower drawer of his desk and then decided against it. There were other ways to get a workout, and right now he felt like he could use the practice.
He left his office with the contents of the left lower drawer of his desk in his hands, leaving his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair. He slightly regretted wearing a white shirt today, but he could have it replaced on the corporate account if it needed it. The lift seemed to take forever to arrive, and when he got in he could feel his heart beating strongly in his chest. He grinned, a defensive reaction, and decided that his reflection looked scared and not cocky. Then the doors slid shut and he held down three unlabelled buttons for five seconds, until a beep sounded, and then waited in the mirrored interior of the lift as it descended to the Infection.
The indicator lights slid past the Basement and Sub-Basement levels and then changed into different symbols, ones that he'd had to learn when he joined Madeleine's team. At first they'd looked like Chinese to him, and then he'd learned that they were more closely, but still distantly, related to Tibetan. Now they made sense as quickly as English when he looked at them, but the message they told still wasn't a happy one. The lift stopped, the doors hissed open, and the indicator lights read Unbastion.
Outside the lift it looked like a cubicle farm: grey worsted carpet stretching from wall to wall; fiefdoms indicated by movable partitiions of coarse, scratchy fabric stretched over plastic frames, dividers between desks. There were chairs, three-drawer pedastels, slightly out-dated flat-screen monitors and battered keyboards; there were dog-eared Dilbert cartoons pinned to the dividers; there was a photocopier with the red service light blinking over to the left, near the lift-entrance. He did a quick count; there were six people working at the desks. Inside the normal range. He stepped out.
The lft doors hissed shut behind him and the people at the desks turned round to look at him. The white and yellow of freshly-stripped skulls were vivid in the fluorescent lights; red and purple tendons held jaw bones in place, and eye sockets were black and empty. A fluttering sound came from overhead somewhere, and there was a rumble like borborygmus of an elephant. He lifted himself lightly onto the balls of his feet, waiting.
Five more people stood up, uncurling from behind pedastels and partitions, stretching unnaturally as though their flesh were waxy and pliable. Kieran's heartrate slowed instantly as he took this in: this should have been reported already if the infection was this bad. He reached out for the state of flow that had made him such a good hockey player, and resigned himself to what was to come.
[Sorry for the double post; I ran over the word-limit again :( ]
Greg - yeah, it's pretty normal, tame stuff. Generally well done, which I appreciate.
The DT was for Donald Trump. Who, somehow, remains president today.
Well this took an unexpected turn. I like it though! And can't wait for more :)
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