Hero

For this week's Trifecta challenge (http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/), use the word "funk", as synonymous with "slump" in 33-333 words. Here's mine:

To live the hero's life, that's what he wanted. Hell, it's what he needed. Twoscore self-critical years was ample time to know that he was a fearful slouch, unchallenged by a mundane existence of his own jumbled construction. Sure he’d seen hard times, and on occasion he'd been swallowed into the belly of the whale. But instead of emerging transformed, he'd sat back on what may have been the whale's tongue, but was more likely his leather couch, grabbed a bag of chips and flipped through a hundred calamitous channels. In his history of shallow and short relationships he had no doubt become entangled with the archetype temptress. And though she had pulled him with resolute firmness into the vestibule in which she presented offerings of masculine redemption for his grasping fingers, he inevitably crawled away broken, sniveling, hurt and none the wiser. He'd flirted with the unknown and had once embarked with few tenuous paces down a road less-traveled (offered by the nearby community college), but before the appearance of long shadows on the edge of a dark wood, he had abruptly turned and hastened a retreat to the eroded and muddied path of his present position as a computer programmer, working on call, as needed, for a successful software firm.

But today was different. After waiting for the restart of his beleaguered laptop, his funk lifted with the illumination of its reignited screen, and he was held aloft on a caffeine pedestal. His hands knowingly lowered to their accustomed position, his right hand enveloped the mouse, guided the cursor to a decisive click. With adroit fingers he began the hero's journey in the Google search bar:

exotic singles cruise

Good Faith

Here's a 33-word poem about "love gone wrong" - the theme for this week's Trifecta writing challenge. Oh, and I can't use the words: love, sad, tears, wept, heart, pain. I assume my use of the word "lover" is OK?

Arguably,

as I told Joe

(good friend)

I’d “give it (us)

a year”,

I was acting

with as much

good faith

as when you

told your lover

we’d be through

before

year’s 

end

For http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/

Sea Life

This is for the latest Trifecta Challenge (Trifextra Week 100?)
http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/
Here are the directions: 

We are asking for a 33-word response to the following snippet:

The first time I saw. . .

Here's the catch: all of your 33 words must be one syllable each.  We're going low-brow on your this week.  Or not.  Can you class it up under these restrictions?  Give us your best.
To clarify, we are giving you 5 words.  We want another 33 from you, for a grand total of 38

With those directions, I could only think "poem", and I employed word contractions after some resistance to get me to the word limit. Here goes:

The first time I saw
a whale
breach

I thought:
"Sky's no home for whales"

The first time I saw
a whale
beached

I thought:
"Sand's no home for whales"

We too act
as though
we're not home

Trifecta Fail

This week's writing challenge was to contain the word "melt", defined: to make tender or gentle; soften.
Below was my attempt to fulfill the challenge as directed. But my attempt contains around 100 words over the 333 max allowed by the challenge. I considered running together gobs of words in order to skirt this defect and claim that my word gobs were a intentional poetic representation of melting. But I guess the reason I participate in the challenge is to force me to write. So here's what I wrote. Call it a Double Melt Trifecta Sandwich Supreme
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"Why did Santa put chocolate in my stocking?", she asked her mother with a touch of irritation. "Didn't he know it would melt in there, so close to the fire?"

Her mother paused to consider her options. Would she accept the blame for the mess? After all, chocolates were part of the usual stocking inventory. But this year, when the girl grabbed the hollow chocolate Santa, it collapsed in her hand, oozing out of its colorful foil wrapper. Santa had been jovially laughing with a mittened hand holding his jolly belly; but when the girl let him drop to the floor to lick the chocolate off her hands, he seemed to lie there doubled over, clenching his stomach to quell the sick, perhaps after a night of celebratory drinking. Surely Santa must also feel relief when the expectations of Christmas are over. And surely Santa could share in the blame for the poorly-placed chocolate, couldn’t he?

"Well," she tried, "I guess he didn't know that mommy would make a fire so early this morning before you looked in your stocking".

Here was a compromise that allowed that it was her fault for building the fire, but that Santa, who seems to know an awful lot, probably should have known about the chocolate threat. The mother had conceded to the girl as she readied for bed that Santa would probably not descend the chimney if he saw the white-gray chimney smoke. But the temperature outside was in the teens overnight and the mother had let the fire burn.

The hissing snakes of heat that had once slithered through the baseboard radiators of the entire house were quiet this season. Instead she had decided to heat that portion of the house the two of them shared with a constantly burning fire built of wood scraps she got for nearly nothing at a nearby mill. This wasn't so odd, she had reasoned. Wasn't this how all houses were heated a hundred years ago? Plus she and her daughter liked the fire. Often they fell asleep together on the couch in front of it. Lulled to sleep by the mesmerizing flicker and crackle, the girl would slip off first. Her slow rhythmic breathing would melt the tension built over the day and her mother would soon follow her, their two bodies once again bound by an enveloping warmth.

The girl settled, "Well, he should have put the chocolate under the tree".

"I’m sure next year he will, honey", responded her mother. “I’m sure next year, Christmas will be even better”.

http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/

elements of surprise

The water
in our basin
is shallow
yet murky.

The future is colluding in darkness
right before our
myopic eyes.

The presentation will 
      dazzle 

Leaving one question:

"What more could I have done"?

The above is my submission (with illegal edits) for this weekend Trifecta writing challenge (http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/) for which I was to add 30 words to the three words offered: Myopic, Dazzle, and Basin.

My poem (the first poem I've every written) might be cheesy or possibly even suck but it describes last Wednesday perfectly for me.

Immortal

Written on the morning of Dec. 4, 2013, just hours before Chewy was struck by a truck and died:

He looked for the dog but she was in some other place. Living out the mandate of predator. In pursuit. On the scent. For the moment - in these moments - the dog had transcended its domestic bonds; she was out of reach, weaving together the forest with invisible thread, this way, cut back, over log, around tree, now fast and direct she ran down into the ravine, impossibly steep; she ran without misstep over bracken and rock and crashed into the icy creek. She lapped at the water furiously before driving up the bank and up the other side of the ravine.

Here she came into his view, running along the next ridge he saw the dog for what she was. Sleek black fur on tight skin covering visible musculature, she was propelled by a vertebral spring in a wingless flight. Against the varied gray background of winter forest she was a charcoal drawing made animate and immortal by limestone parchment.

His dry lips faintly whistled.  He called out "Hey pup!"

Without pause and without acknowledgement her trajectory bent toward him as the gravity of man pulls on all terrestrial bodies. She circled to cross the creek upstream where it was narrow and had not yet plunged into the ravine. Full speed the dog ran past him as if in resentful defiance, before skidding to turn and meet him in full smile, tongue curling with panted breaths, ears pressed but tail unrestrained, 

she returned to him.

For Chewy 11/29/2010 - 12/4/2013

A Tush for Trifecta

The car door opened and a whoosh - more felt than heard - signaled the release of the warmed cabin air. The man had procrastinated this moment. With feigned interest in a dull radio conversation and extended deliberation on the best place to hide his wallet, he had remained, numbed tush molded into bucket seat. But with the invasion of cold into the car, the plastic foam seats and thin upholstery would soon give up their collected heat, and there was little reason to stay inside. Now, warmth would depend on effort.

The dog, with impatient groans and pleading whimpers, was indifferent to such trivial comforts in these moments and applauded the man’s decision to begin their walk with her wild tail.

Opening the rear door, he quickly fastened the leash onto the harness loop between the dog’s shoulder blades as it scrambled out. The slam of the door officially ended the drone of the tires, the anonymous chatter of radio, the roar of the heater fan; all this would now be replaced by whatever sounds a walk in the woods on a late November morning could offer.

The dog pulled the man across the gravel lot toward the familiar trail head. A solid wall of young trees and invasive shrubs broke open, revealing a pathway plush with shed leaves, already browned and softened by a hard frost and subsequent rains. With a final crunch of gravel they sunk into this other place.

The above is offered as my opening submission to the Trifecta challenge. For more info visit http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/