Weekly Writing Prompt

Once more into the breach!

Actually, today we're going to try flipping things on their ear a bit. Instead of just writing a short, we're going to write a poem.

What? A poem? And me without my turtleneck, beret, and over-sized mug of overpriced cappuccino.

Here's something I was told once, possibly in a fever dream: All writing is poetry. Everything you write, whether it's a letter to the bank asking them to please stop "accidentally" giving away all your private information, or an 1100-page tome describing an elder-god's assault on a small Maine town (often in the form of a creep clown), everything is poetry.

Your words need to flow, need to grab the reader, and need to keep their attention. Best part? You don't need to worry about rhyming!

But this time, just for fun, we're gonna rhyme like no one's watching. Which, on this blog, is a pretty good inevitability.

TO THE RANDOM WORD GENERATOR!

Grit Serum Silver Monochrome Extract Kind Frame Tight Evidence Eat

Woooooooah!

That's pretty slick. I'm liking this word generator. Okay, let's start by pairing this off a bit.

Extract and Serum fit together, but so do Extract, Tight, and Frame.

Grit and Silver could work. Silver and Monochrome work.

Evidence...Eat...

You know, I'm calling it Kismet right now. We're doing an IT poem. Well, not IT, but a similar monster.

ALL THAT GLITTERS

“Beneath a sky of slate and gray
That lorded o’er the decay
Of homes and hovels, empty rooms
As vacant as a specter’s tomb
Sheets of rain descended, soaking
To the bone, a battered, broken
Shell of what was once a man
Of grit and vigor: Call him Stan.
He walks a path of shattered bottles
Clothing ragged, skin the mottled
Color of a rotten pear
Beneath a greasy mop of hair.
With drunken steps he flees in silence
From some unseen vicious violence
Evident from all the red
That covers him from toe to head.
Miles back, a mine shaft entrance
Vacant now, but once a presence
Of an evil old as sin
That claimed the lives of those within.
In caves as black as bubbling pitch
A group of men disturbed a stitch
That sealed a world of pain and doom
And loosed a nightmare on the room.
A careless swing, a single stroke
And with a BANG the lock was broke
The wall unraveled, spilling forth
The creature known as Kal’Akorth.
It started small, with haunting light
That oozed out from an endless night
Then followed by a writhing limb
Along with a melodic hymn.
The eldritch creature squirmed and howled
While the miners screamed and cowered
With a roar, a haunting squaw
The god revealed its monstrous maw.
Poor Josh, he was the first to go
Beheaded by a sudden blow
Then Glen and Marty, short and stout
Had heart and lungs ripped cleanly out.
The foreman, Kenneth, tried to run
But fell as though shot with a gun
A limb of sinew dragged him back
To give the god a bloody snack.
Kal’Akorth swelled and filled the mine
Its body oozing silver slime
And Stan grew woozy from the fumes
That filled the rumbling death-filled room.
When Franky went, that was the trigger
Stan, released from frightened rigor
Turned and bolted, blind with dread
With screaming echoes in his head.
He bolted in a fevered flight
Toward the safety of the light
Pursued under the maddening glower
Of Kal’Akorth, the Great Devourer.
With dawn in sight, poor Stan turned back
He grabbed a bomb and lit a match
And waited for the trembling dirge
And for the darkness to emerge.
In moments, Kal’Akorth arrived
While Stan stood silent, petrified
Its arms reached out, but with a flash
It dissipated inside a blast.
Now Stan, he shuffles toward the grave
His life the last he couldn’t save
His wounds are mortal, dripping down
But still he knows he saved the town.
He staggers, stumbling, breathes his last
The final victim of the blast
His body shudders, then release
As Stan seeks out his final peace.
But in his mind, a horror lingers
On his back, like many fingers
The last though through his mind is wonder
If the shaking ground is just from thunder.”