Life in progress

Monthly Archives: February 2013


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Wasted Time

To rest alone within leisurely time
A well wasted space of unhidden bidding
To take up the taste of weightless encumbrance
The hours tick by without lifting a hand.

The eons of thoughts which pass through this pencil
When sitting in crowded rooms filled with the wares
Of life’s inspiration in hot bodied persons
They see me, they don’t. Invisible I write.

I wonder if they are as curious as I am
To know this lone figure in a sea of companions
Appear to be wasting my time in hot coffee-
filled dreams of a writer in idling waste.

What of my poems, my stories, my scribbles
Are worthy of readership blessed by the critics
When sit here I sit and I write about nothing
For nothing can come of my time wasted hand.

My mind it keeps turning and churning out lead
From my Bic #2 of black and of purple
The people ignore me by diminishing plate-fulls
My cup runneth over, my coffee refilled.

Where was I? Oh yes, I am here wasting time
My ears filled with droning of foreign speech convos
The lead leads to dullness, the clock I hear ticking
Is life passing by through my time withered grasp.

But time has no meaning in this little cafe
Christmas cake scarfed back in March by my side
And perfumes of women that drown out the noises
Of plates hitting forks hitting dentures, my turn?

Not yet. I sit with my pencil and bang out a poem
The stares and the glances ignored by my will
The writer within me strains hard to the surface
But still I write nothing, time wasted, again.

@Linda G. Hill

March 2005


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Forty-something and still growing up

What is it about my life that at what should be my bed time I start acting like a teenager? I know damned well that I’m tired, and yet I refuse to do the sensible thing and go to bed.

I think that maybe it’s the quiet which lures me into wakefulness. When it’s quiet I can concentrate on writing. At night I don’t have to worry about the phone ringing to tell me someone has been misbehaving at school and can I please come and pick him up.  During the day I’m so worried that my creativity will be interrupted that I would rather procrastinate by playing Bejewelled than run the risk of starting and having to stop. Then there’s the fact that at night I can act like an adult: having a child who refuses to play silently by himself (and by that I mean if I don’t play with him he screams at me until I do – long story) is hardly conducive to sitting down to a peaceful cup of java and a pleasant read.  Oh, and wine of course. THAT I can enjoy a glass of after the kiddies are safely tucked away in bed.

After all, isn’t being a teenager all about wanting to grow up? Yeah, I’ll bitch about how tired I am in the morning…

Maybe I’m not really grown up after all.


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Eight Yielding Mother

Sun gleams golden through autumn’s glorious passing. Morning coffee steams promises of wakefulness. Wake up, thirsty mother. Love’s remembrance lays fast. Wake up, confounded woman.

Mother settles at the kitchen table and welcomes the joyful twitter of birds through the open window. She breathes the cool fresh air and raises her feet, crossing her ankles on the chair opposite. With a sigh she rests her right hand on her belly, her left lifts her cup to her lips. Sweet nectar of the Gods, mother loves her coffee.

Boy thunders down the stairs in his school uniform and stops dead, seeing mother’s pose. Brother, following, almost runs into him.

“Will he kill this one too?” boy asks mother.

Mother stares at boy, wordlessly, the day shines blindingly in her eyes. She hardly comprehends the first swing that sends boy crashing to her feet.

“You can’t say that!” brother yells, falling atop boy.

Mother, unable to conceive of how she can dissolve the dispute while preserving her unborn child, sips her coffee, noting that the birds have abandoned their song.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Nine click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Seven Still Boy

Darkness drapes heavy across the shoulders, comforting, calming. Listen, quiet boy. Father’s love clinks, pours wetly, gulps, and sighs rancid. Listen fast, poor boy.

Boy creeps down the stairs, avoiding the creaks and groans he knows so well. He takes cover in the dark corner between the stairs and the kitchen door. At first all he hears is the tick of the clock that guards the hours of father’s rigid schedule.

“You’re wrong,” confesses father. “Your mother is a saint.”

“Why then?” asks brother.

Boy hears liquid sloshing into one glass, then another. The shadows on the floor shift and the tumblers collude sickeningly.

“Because,” answers father. “She is better than me. And that good-for-nothing little dick you call a brother is better than you.”

Boy hears a chair propelled back across the linoleum and a monstrous shadow stands, larger than life.

“Don’t you ever tell her I said that!” father roars.

The meeker shadow crashes to the floor and boy cringes, afraid. Slowly it picks itself up, sits, and slurps from its glass.

Boy scrunches back further into the corner and closes his eyes when father’s shadow starts to the door. Boy hears father’s fly unzip as he steals up to the room he shares with mother.

After many breaths boy quietly returns in the dark to the asylum of his bed.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Eight click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Six Charming Brother

Time is of the essence now; the minutes tick by like days. Look back young boy. Father’s dear love ties clots in the throat, mother puddles to the floor. Look back young man!

Two weeks have passed since the last incident and brother bounds down the stairs to the kitchen. Mother kneels on the spotless floor pouring food into the new cat bowl, the animal hums at her side. She lovingly strokes the glossy black creature.

“Your brother comes home today,” mother says without looking up.

“I know. And father?”

“Not until tomorrow.”

Brother places his hands on his hips.

“Can we pick him up from the train station?” brother demands.

Mother looks up sharply, narrowing her eyes.

“Who will look after your brother?” mother accuses.

“He will come along,” brother smiles and swipes at his lips with the back of his hand.

“We’ll see,” says mother, turning her attention back to the cat.

Brother stares for a moment longer, at mother, at the cat. He races back to the privacy of his room.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Seven click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Five Denying Mother

A single shard of crystal twinkles red, a bloody star in the sunlight. Strip your eyes from this pretty corner. Home wraps its arms around like a cool gray blanket. You are the fulcrum.

Perspiration drips from mother’s brow and lands on her skirted knee as she scoops up the last of the broken glass from the kitchen floor. She wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist and turns to the small shadow in the doorway. Mother gazes up at her eldest child. Brother’s stance, in nothing but cotton boxers, belies his vulnerability. Mother thinks that at thirteen he is trivial for his age.

“Where is he?” asks her son.

“He went back to work,” answers mother.

“And…”

“Hospital,” mother yields.

As mother stands she picks up the cat’s food bowl. She makes a mental note to go to the pet store. With a heavy thunk! the bowl impacts the inside of the black plastic trash bin, the lid closes, the sun gleams from its surface.

Brother shields his eyes and runs to get dressed.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Six click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Invaluable

The most supportive people in a writer’s life are the ones who understand when it’s time to *whispers* go away.


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Four Dauntless Boy

Eyes sealed shut. Panic seizes, throat closes; gasp! Hush, little boy, don’t cry. Strange hand offers a warm squeeze of reassurance that you still are. Frantically scratch apart the crusted eyelashes. MOTHER!

Hush little boy…

The room is white, clean, sterile but for one miniscule element. Daylight streams through the window illuminating a thousand tiny dust particles that float carelessly, irreverent of the void where mother should be. In her stead is a doctor, occupying the spot on the shiny gray stone floor where the sun would otherwise lazily lay down her rays. Nothing in the scene reflects the unease that builds in boy’s chest.

“The patient was admitted last night with lacerations to the face, neck…”

Boy assumes the doctor is talking about him as he and the young, worry-eyed but healthy nurse are the only ones in the room besides a group of students in white coats carrying clipboards and looking eagerly at the droning doctor in charge.

“…and a crushed collarbone…”

Boy doesn’t know what a collarbone is, but the area below his throat shrieks in his ears of white hot pain

“…surgically extracted fragments of bone…”

compared to all the other little pinches he feels when he moves.

The nurse helps him to sit and offers him a straw with water at the other end in a blue plastic cup.

“Where’s my mom?” boy whispers to the nurse.

She smiles sadly and pats boy’s arm and he’s not sure if she heard his question. Then everyone is gone.

Boy’s eyes begin to leak great tears that splash upon his blue gown, darkening it like so many bruises. He wipes violently at his silliness and stares at the motes of dust until they vanish, the sun obliterated by the menacing shadow of a cloud.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Five click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Three Angry Brother

Fear: writhing serpentine ineffectiveness slithers from your pores. Go deep, angry child. Father’s affection stings like the buzzing of a hot summer hive. Mother is soft, weak, an open sore. Go deep, angry young man.

In the heat of the night brother arrives home. His fists ache, his legs, from miles in his shoes, tremble. Above the whine of cicadas brother hears a chunk! chunk! staccato as he reaches for the door. Apprehension tingles at the bridge of his nose.

“Ahhhh,” cries father.

Brother tiptoes around the house aware of each blade of grass he crushes underfoot.

“Ahhh, hu hu hu,” cries father.

Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! Relentless is the shovel as it lacerates the innocent ground. Brother hurries back to the door and steps inside. He senses the absence of life all around and the silence grips his throat.

The hairs rising from his scalp precede brother up the stairs to his room. He slips closed the lock. Under the covers he shivers to the faint chunk! chunk!, rhythm to father’s lament.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Four click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Two Dear Mother

Bless the little ones for they cannot be helped. Seen through his eyes there is love; love is pain. Mother comforts the fragile. Frozen quick as zero’s sudden chill, life shatters, close your eyes. Hide from the pool’s crimson darkness. Bleed for them; in ways you always have.

Father sits at the kitchen table, rays of sun inspiring rainbows from the crystal of his tumbler. He contemplates the dark liquid inside: it clashes with the stench of bleach from mother’s cloth. The stinking cat is rubbing against his leg.

“Where is that little shit now?” asks father.

“He is at a friend’s house,” replies mother.

Mother doesn’t look at father. She keeps her right profile from his sight knowing the bruise will enrage him. Mother hopes boy has indeed gone to his friend’s house.

A door opens as though on cue.

“Lying to me again,” says father under his breath.

Father turns to boy.

“Why can’t you do as your mother expects of you?” father bellows.

Father scoops up the cat and throws it at boy, knocking boy off his feet.

To Three click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.