MY LAMENT TO THE PIMP OF PROSE

My words, each a pearl, perfect and pure I expose

For examination, only to have the brightest stripped,

Disemboweled by the hard-hearted,

Laser-eye of The Pimp of Prose.

I wonder what am I doing.

Why do I spend my days seeking,

striving to draw the attention of the unseen face,

The Pimp of Prose?

So eager am I to please this peddler of the soul,

I fret and stew to dress and redress my meager offering,

hoping to one day delight the demi-God,

The Pimp of Prose.

Keeping the lure of gold in his mind’s eye,

I know he will choose, not mine, but the prominent name.

My heart shrivels with each rejection.

I weep, my shame exposed.

Over, and over I crawl on bended knee,

 Place my words written with my blood,

Before that elusive, mocking crown.

I serve every syllable, bright and shiny, upon the alter.

I endure the snorts of disdain:

Not good enough.

The wrong shape.

The wrong color.

Don’t need another one of these.

And I wonder what makes me think I could ever please

THE PIMP OF PROSE?

By Dorothy A. Bell

Insomnia, In My Gentle Twilight Hues

by Dorothy A. Bell

In the black and white

Before she decides the color of the day,

The earth lies still and stark,

And I rest in a sleepless haze.

In my head,

Upon a stage, miniscule and grand

A shade, I call insomnia, splatters across the bleak pre-light.

Applying a creative pallet.

Here I lay suspended

Between dream-world

And reality

Seeking relief from my body’s

Screaming pain.

To ignore the pest

I turn up the volume

On an old, familiar dream.

At first, the vision floats out of focus.

I tune it in…

Sharpen the scene

I know  every player’s part.

If I shift my body’s weight

The dream,

I fear,

will fall apart.

With the wild drumbeat of my heart

Pounding against my skull,

I take shallow breaths.

My organ’s constant rhythm interferes.

I know my heart is there,

blood and sinew,

Yet I resent the  intrusion.

What I crave, is my illusion,

Distraction from my pain is what I seek.

Garish color spreads across the cheek

Of the earth where I lay.

Ah, it’s here,

The dreaded light of a new day.

My eyes snap shut,

Behind closed lids,

I hold the darkness,

Snatching at a scrap of dream

To carry with me into the fray.

Now in broad daylight,

Hobbled by my infirmities,

Mind and body weary of the struggle,

If I close my eyes,

Return to that old dream,

Looking to escape my body’s unrelenting scream

In the gentle twilight hues of my insomnia.

THE BABE AND THE BLUE CAT

BY

DOROTHY A. BELL

 (An exercise in one-syllable words)

A cloak of dark

hid the boy with hair of fire.

To make a torch of the wood,

he flew close to the land!

His eye to the rise,

and the first ray of sun,

he saw the crone in her black cart.

He heard her caw!  Caw!

Her call to lead him back to the croft!

“Dark will stay to hold the night!”

The crone did chant.

“Sun be gone!

Fire burn!

Lift the cloud to chase the day!”

A pure, blonde babe woke—he lay in his wee bed.

A far off voice he did hear.

He saw the wood.

The flame lit sky!

Where was the sun?

Day was here,

but all was dark!

Not a star did he spy.

Fire was in his nose and hair!

Fire was in the wood!

A shrill caw, caw… put ice in his pure heart!

A blue cat did step to his side,

a soft paw she put on his cheek.

A tear fell, warm with salt, on the nose of the cat.

“Purr, purr” said the cat.

“Chert and stone!

Pearl and bone!”

sang the cat to the babe.

The babe did sniff to dry his eyes.

He gave an ear,

his lips did part,

a smile broke,

and with a wink,

he sang,

“Chert and stone!

Pearl and bone!

sun, the birth of fire,

warm the new day!

Evil gone; good will out!

Stay the clouds of gray.

Rain down where sweet grass will grow!”

“Chert and stone!

Pearl and bone!

Caw! Caw!  Be gone the crone!”

sang the babe and the cat.

The crone did lie in her black cart to wail and pitch!

And in her wake, a slick of oil!

The boy with hair of fire

was but a spit of rain

to douse the flame

on the land.

Birds flew on high!

Bugs leapt to taste the dew!

As he sat on the floor,

the cat at his side,

a beam of gold from the sun to warm his blonde head,

“Chert and stone!

Pearl and bone!”

sang the babe.

“Purr, purr,”

said the blue cat.

The End