The exercise:
Write about: the protest.
Things just get more and more interesting to the south. Who knows when and where and how this will all come to an end.
Another quiet day at work. Still not a complaint.
Mine:
A show of silent unity,
Against a loud-mouthed bully,
That some people don't seem to get -
At least not fully.
They kneel, they sit, they link their arms,
And ignore those who cry folly!
Determined to win this battle
Without firing a volley...
2 comments:
I read an opinion piece this morning about how if Donald Trump isn't a white supremacist he's doing a good impersonation of one, and this sadly seems to back that up. Together with his refusal to invite one of the NBA players to the White House. I also saw that the latest attempt to deprive millions of Americans of affordable medical care has failed so he's victimising McCain... it's an astonishing way for a leader to behave. I guess this is proof that being President and being CEO require rather different skillsets.
I think your poem does a nice job of summarising the problem in just two verses: not a wasted word! The second verse is my favourite of the two, with the neat folly-volley rhyme.
The protest
The rug in front of the wood-burning fire was bunched up again. It had been soft wool once, but after many washings it was quite coarse now, and the oranges and blues had faded to a kind of muddy purple. Samantha sighed and kicked at it, gently, with her foot, pushing it back out flattish. There was no point bending down and getting it perfect; Sandy, her dog, always took that as an invitation to lie down on it, which involved turning around and around and bunching it back up again. She drew the curtains next, shutting out the night, and then decided that the side-lamp wasn't quite bright enough, so she found the matches and lit the oil-lamp at the desk. It wasn't really the best light for working by, but it was warm and comforting. With all that done she sat down and pulled the pages of her novel towards her, and concentrated.
Half an hour later she leaned back in the chair, stretching her back and lifting her arms above her head. She looked around the room, blinking as she left the world of the Protest and returned to this one, and noted with mild annoyance that the rug was bunched again. Sandy was nowhere to be seen: clearly she'd been in and then left again when Samantha wasn't paying her attention. She felt a twinge of guilt, but pushed it aside: finding time to write wasn't easy and wasn't something she should feel guilty about.
She stood up and kicked the rug flat again. Actually the activity helped ease her muscles, and she now felt a little bad about mentally being angry with Sandy. She smiled: it was like talking to herself, but less obviously mad. Well, while she was up she may as well make a cup of tea, and ponder why her protagonist would want to leave the protest movement, which was a key plot point.
When she came back with the cup of tea, raspberry-scented steam drifting into her face as she sipped it, the oil-lamp was burning low and casting active shadows around the room. She set the cup down on the desk and wondered where she'd left the lamp-oil. Oh, the kitchen cupboard -- she saw that the rug was bunched again with another flicker of annoyance. She kicked it flat once more and went back into the kitchen.
Strong hands seized her face from behind; hard fingers pressing painfully into her cheeks, finding the bone, and a smell of wet wool engulfed her making her retch. Foul breath, smelling like week-old meat left out in the sun, filled her nostrils and in the reflection provided by the kitchen window she saw he assailant: white face make-up, red lips, no nose, and eyes so bruised they might as well be holes.
"I live under the rug," hissed a voice in her ears.
Greg - I get a twitch whenever I see you call him a leader. I'm sure it's nothing serious though :P
Yeah, I don't think he's impersonating one. I think that's just the way he is. And somehow, he is still president. Sigh.
I... was not expecting that ending. At all. Fantastic lead up to it, by the way. An idyllic scene that you somehow managed to fill with an impending sense of bad things about to come.
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