Dale Tudge? Humor!

#decode deciphered
by de ring on his finger
from dat club he joined

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry

The sorceress's apprentice delighted in being #spellbound, but less thrilled with spelltied, spellwhipped, and spellbeaten.

The apprentice had submitted an appropriate safe word to the sorceress, which turned out to be a spell that compelled the villagers to spell out YMCA.

#vss365 #prose #humour

I look over to my partner and tap him on the nose—twice. That means we're being watched, or is it "I smell danger." I know what danger looks like... most of the time. But what does danger smell like exactly? A burned figgy pudding? The deceptively sweet and frankly toxic flesh of a yewberry? Spilled petrol? Petrol is certainly dangerous, spilled or otherwise. Yes, that explains it. It's the two suspicious men hiding in the yewberry bush across the lane. It has to be! Two taps means twice the danger. And I only brought one pudding.

The old woman at the local launderette volunteered to watch my clothes. She offered to read my future during the spin cycle—like a medium reading tea leaves. She accepted donations to fund research for chronic vertigo.

#poemsabout #beingwatched #crimefiction #fiction #crime #crimetories #writing

WHO will cry for the torpid thespians, the tired stock players at the Standard, Shoreditch, in the fourteenth revival of The Silver King?

Will ANYONE weep for the understudy, eleven months the Treacherous Steward, the man above him sustained by a #play that also shows no sign of ending?

#prose

Magma Man and Lava Mouse were my first "creative" thought when I read #magnanimous, and not another thought on the matter. But now I've given it more thought. The mouse isn't a contrast to the man—the mouse is also lava. Maybe Magma Man & Lava Mouse deserve to exist—unless they already do.

#vss365

The Lethargymen, members of the #Lethargy, part of the ancient Stillness tradition, once widespread, were known for their lack of considerable theological output. They were so lethargic they barely wrote anything down. This made worship and proselytizing difficult.

Worst religion ever.

#vss365

torpid thespians actors in an #idle play, moribund... perhaps.

torpid thespians
actors in an #idle play,
moribund... perhaps.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry #thespians #acting #actors #theatre #thespians

To write about #lethargy would require a level of mental energy I am simply unwilling to expend on such a trivial creative exercise. The explanation itself is exhausting.

#vss365

The First Dimmening: A Cataract Origin Tale A Study in Progressive Occlusion, Mature Suffusion, and Divine Aphakia In the age before the Dimmening, where the gods looked down and the people of the Cataracta looked up and the looking was unobstructed, where even the least vastest of the vast stars can—or could, but probably can—be seen—so begins the Stele of Presbyos. The people could count the black basalt cones of the Bayuda from the river, each peak distinct against the sky. They had one word for truth and sight, and one word for falsehood and fog, which made the events that followed difficult to discuss without also doubting them—and I have given you no reason to doubt me. Have I? The temple of the Cataractatianites—the demonym accrued syllables as successive translators declined to abbreviate their predecessors—stood at the base of Jebel Barkal, a flat-topped mountain rising from the desert plain. The Kushites would later call it the Pure Mountain, believing their god Amun born behind its southern face. But the Cataracts arrived first, building into its rock a narrow chamber they called the Iris, through which a single aperture admitted or refused all light. Their ceremonies required aqueous humour—of the humorous kind—a fermented ritual drink whose recipe has not survived, though the vessels have. Then Sclera, goddess of the outer boundary, quarrelled with her sister Cornea, keeper of the threshold, over who controlled what entered the eye of the sky. Cornea, in her fury, breathed mist upon the land. Sclera hardened the mist to a film—an opacity, in the language of those who came after—and between them they sealed the heavens behind a milky veil. The people of the Cataracta looked up and could no longer resolve the stars. The mountain, no longer clearly visible from the river, was quietly reclassified as the Mostly Pure Mountain, and later, after progressive deterioration, as the Mountain of Conditions.

Who would possibly be interested in a story about #cataracts? Especially one without any juicy laser eye surgery mishaps. The Cataractatianites?

Perhaps.

#vss365 #history #historicfiction #prose #verse #poem #poetry #story #writing #fiction #reading #ancienthistory #historicalfiction

Romance Sonámbulo A love forlorned, and love for Lorne and Lorna Dale Tudge The bookstore had invited an English-speaking professor to read Lorca in the original Spanish, which nobody in the room spoke well, or at all, including the handsome professor, whose field was accounting but who had a beautiful reading voice and a recently difficult divorce. Lorna sat in the third row because the first two were taken by women who had come for the professor — or would soon. Lorne sat in the third row because the fourth row had a broken chair and he’d already fallen off it once. The professor read “Romance Sonámbulo.” Verde, que te quiero verde. Green, how much I want you green. Neither Lorne nor Lorna understood the wanting, but both recognized it. The professor’s voice broke slightly on a line about a railing and a moon, and everyone in the room pretended not to notice. Afterward there was Marqués de Murrieta in paper cups. The professor attempted to read the side of the box aloud to the women from the first two rows, who had encircled him near the register, his Spanish tongue loosened by the grape. He gave the Marqués the same tenderness he’d given Lorca. They hadn’t come for either — though the wine had a satisfying finish. Lorne held his cup with both hands, which Lorna found either endearing or concerning, she hadn’t decided. He told her he’d come for the Lorca. She told him she’d come for the free wine. Both were lying, but in opposite directions. Lorna and Lorne went home together — and it wasn’t to study Spanish, but judging from Lorca, it probably also was. The professor went home alone, to the house he still shared with his ex. One woman from the front row left with a copy of Romancero Gitano. Another took a half-empty box of Marqués. A third later asked the bookstore owner if she could book the professor for a private function. Nobody discussed the poetry.

They said love would never #last. They said making
love could not last. The wine, at least, did not
last — but that was a long time ago, and they
were wrong about everything else.

#fantasy #romantasy #romance #fiction #romantic #love #romancewriters #lovestory #lovepoem #lovepoetry

Driving the last spike… But are these not railroad tracks? We’re riding the rails.

Driving the #last spike…
But are these not railroad tracks?
We’re riding the rails.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry #trains #railroad

Good to the #last drop? The second-last drop: bitter. Folgers: the last choice.

Good to the #last drop?
The second-last drop: bitter.
Folgers: the last choice.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry #march

“Mr Joel,
the good news is
you do not have #cataracts.

But if you don’t
reduce your salt intake,
choose a healthier lifestyle,
and include exercise,

you’re placing yourself
at higher risk of a

heart attack—
ack-ack-ack-ack.”

#vss365 #billyjoel #music #humor #humour #joke

“Mr Springsteen,
I’m afraid you have cataracts,
and one of them is pink.

You have
a pink #cataract.”

#vss365 #humor #joke

Eyes: windows to soul (until the panes grow cloudy) #Cataracts, the blinds.

Eyes: windows to soul
(until the panes grow cloudy)
#Cataracts, the blinds.

#vss365 #HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry

Yves was right at ease. Each eve, he did as he pleased. This did not please Eve.

Yves was right at #ease.
Each eve, he did as he pleased.
This did not please Eve.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry

The Minutes of the Mighty Volume I: The Clicking Dale Tudge Let it be recorded—as all things are recorded—in the Minutes of the Mighty, that Neville, known as the Nigh-Mighty, son of Michael the Mighty, grandson of Moriarty the Mightier, great-grandson of Magnus the So Mighty That Further Discussion Is Unnecessary, was not so mighty as his ancestors. This is known. Neville knew it himself. Beyond the scorched hills, through the ochre haze, lay what remained of Old New Metropolonia—once the mightiest of the Five Cities. Nothing dwells there now except the corrosion, which the elders said was patient and would outlast them all. A fungus fed off the corrosion. The air about it tasted like a coin at the bottom of a crater. Neville regarded the jagged skyline from his usual glowing rock. It vexed him, as it had always vexed him, though not enough to move him to a different rock. The rock used to make his loins tingle, but no longer. This, too, was known, though not discussed. Neville adjusted his sword, “Swordy,” for that was the way of him, though the blade bore the ancient inscription REPLICA, so named by the men of great knowledge. It was a sword of barbaric proportions, made for someone considerably more mighty than Neville, recovered from an underground armoury beneath what the elders called the Temple of Gathering Magic, where gathered men of great knowledge and little sunlight, those who knew the ancient ways. The sword had taken to glowing recently. Neville took this as a sign of improving quality, which it was not. Behind him, somewhere past the irradiated perimeter, a radiation marker clicked steadily, the way it had clicked since before he was born. The elders said the clicking meant danger. The elders said this of many things. But on this day, the clicking was louder, faster, nearer. Neville stood. Swordy throbbed with what Neville believed was excitement, which it was not. It was cesium. And so Neville went forth, Swordy in hand, toward the clicking.

My story began with #splendour, but then decayed into madness—something I often see in others who drink from the same tire swing.

#vss365 #prose #fiction #weirdfiction #toxicfiction #scifi #sciencefiction #ApocalypseFiction #PostApocalyptic #ApocalypticFiction #PostApocalypse #fantasy

Or Safire's words in Agnew's mouth.

Whereas, the ghost #writer, you can imagine, #writes words that tend to give unrealistic, and, as is most often the case, or casket, downright unnatural living qualities to the dead. #Timid Casper, the friendly one, demonstrated cognitive abilities deemed extraordinary for the afterlife. #vss365

What Lies Behind Darkened Doors Inside Darkened Houses The Bedaubining of Edith Walker (1958, Dreadfully Poor Publications) Dale Tudge Good evening, timid readers, tremulous viewers, and part-time horror enthusiasts with distressingly sensitive constitutions. Tonight’s ghastly tale of terror concerns a dread darkness, one so unspeakable that those who have spoken of it were never heard from again. And those who heard about it? Most of them have been heard from, but on fewer occasions, citing a need to spend more time with their families, which seems reasonable, given such proximity to darkness. Our story takes us to a solitary house bedaubed by darkness, haunted, certainly, or so most will merely assume. Not merely a haunted house, but a house from which no traveller has returned, and from which no traveller has been expected to return. There is no one waiting for their return, which, now that I’ve heard of it, is darker than the house. The postman delivers to the end of the lane, which is as far as the postman and the lane will go, and which is—by the postman’s account—already farther than he would prefer. The mail, not even the returned mail, ever returns. Within this house there is a room, darkened, and within this darkened room there is framed a door, unopened and never opened, and behind it, a second door that, one assumes, has similarly not been opened, though confirming this would require opening the first, which no one has volunteered to do, and which, it has been noted, is not currently being asked of anyone, which is a relief to those who were not going to do it regardless. But I see that we have arrived at the customary point in the evening when we begin, and as beginning would require a certain amount of proceeding, and proceeding has not gone entirely well for those previously mentioned, I think it best if we leave it there. Most of it. Some of it may follow you home, but in limited quantities, and not most nights—certainly not the darkness-laden ones.

A #ghostwriter, that is to say, a #writer who has ghostwritten—pertaining to the #writing of certain #words with an expectation that those words sound like the one who paid for them.

#horror #gothic #poem #poetry #prose #booksky #emoetry #microfiction #inkmine #poemsabout #vss365 #fiction

The pet store opens. “Are thessse miiice fressssh?” preys the snake. “From farm to fang, ma’am.”

The pet store opens.
“Are thessse miiice fressssh?” preys the snake.
“From farm to fang, ma’am.”

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #fresh #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry

O #timid kitten!
Pusillanimous pussy—
affright’d ’fraidy-cat.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry #vss365

March duly arrives with a Spring in its step and a dash of season.

March duly arrives
with a Spring in its step and
a dash of season.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #verse #prose #inkmine #emoetry #march

A Very Fine Morning for It Indeed Dale Tudge The vole ventures timidly outside its little door into a morning that smells of rain and new grass. It finds a beetle, carries it to a patch of sun, and crunches it there, turning the pretty-coloured carapace in its tiny paws. The hare rises from its form and feels the wind full of clover. It noses into a patch of fuzzy flowers and eats them standing up, the way hares do, tasting the wind between mouthfuls. The grouse steps from the heather and finds the bilberries ripe. It pecks one, then another, then surveys the moor with its chest out, because this is the grouse’s table. The stoat ventures outside its den into the same morning. It finds a vole in a patch of sun, still turning something in its paws, and seizes it by the neck and carries it home and eats the vole, whole, in one gulp. The fox feels the wind full of hare. It crosses the field low and fast and catches the hare standing up, the way foxes do, and eats it in the grass, ripping its flesh across the fresh clover. The harrier lifts from the bracken into an enormous sky. It spots the grouse’s table and pulls up a seat, tearing open its bilberry-filled belly. It rises again, above the moor, searching for more grouse, and fewer bilberries. The old woman opens her shutters of marzipan and her door of bread and cake and stands in her doorway of spun sugar, breathing the lane. The morning smells of rain and new grass. And children. The kindly Kinderfresser goes back inside and lights her stove. (ap·dt)

This dark children's story is not for the #timid, the weak of heart, the weak of leg, and, oh, what a week it's been.

#children #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #booksky #prose #inkmine #emoetry #blueskypoetry #foxprose #vss365 #march #spring

Office of Scientific Personnel Disbursements, Third Floor Dr. Benton C. Quest, This office has processed your travel reimbursement for fiscal year 1966 and notes the following: Seventeen field sites visited. Fourteen no longer exist. The remaining three are under investigation by agencies whose names this office is not cleared to type. Your receipts from the “Land of the Turu,” which appears on none of our maps and all of yours, include a line item for “structural demolition (unscheduled)” which is not a category. It is now a category. You are the reason it is a category. We have approved the claim. We ALWAYS approve the claim. The Secretary has asked us to stop telling him what you cost and start telling him what you prevent, which is apparently everything, at the expense of everything else. Please find enclosed your per diem adjustment and a revised W-2 reflecting hazard pay for your son, Jonny, your son’s friend, Hadji Singh, federally classified as wizard “mystic,” your son’s dog, Bandit, whose security clearance this office can neither confirm nor explain, and a man named Bannon whose job title changes with every form he submits. The Director of Intelligence One requests that you try to prevent something without destroying something else. Regards, G. Pfeiffer Office of Scientific Personnel Disbursements, Third Floor P.S. Mr. Bannon’s Form 27-B requesting naugahyde seat covers for your aircraft is denied. There is no budget for jet upholstery.

Jonny Quest seems an honest lad, reminiscent of a young Allan Quatermain, a Doc Savage Jr. with more explosives, better weaponry, and a Cold War super scientist for a father.

#vss365 #quest #writing #scifi #scifisat #sciencefiction #adventure #booksky #tvsky #cartoonsky #redskiesatnight

If a story FINDS a reader laughing,
a #poem CATCHES a passer-by smiling,
and a piece of #prose
follows a stranger home—

well,
that's THREE people I've changed today.

FOUR,
if someone reports the stranger.

*FIVE unlocks a side #quest.

#writing #poetry #blueskypoetry #geeks #nerds #vss365

the #quest it will fail when the tardy time capsule forgets it has time.

the #quest it will fail
when the tardy time capsule
forgets it has time.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #prose #inkmine #emoetry #blueskypoetry #foxprose #vss365 #scifi #scifisat

If you're headed to Tesco,
please pick up a case of Irn-Bru.

If you hold any moral grievances against this,
I will gladly accept Fanta Orange.

And if you haven't #spent above your budget,
I've been yomping for a bag of Haribo.

#poemsabout #spent #tesco #poetry #poem #writing

the market did #crash when the rotting roof collapsed so many dates crushed.

the market did #crash
when the rotting roof collapsed
so many dates crushed.

#HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #HaikuChallenge #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #reading #prose #inkmine #emoetry #blueskypoetry #foxprose

The Fall of the House Across the Street from the House of Usher Dale Tudge It was assessed at fourteen thousand dollars before the fall — I shall not say whose fall, for falls there had been several, and the distinctions between them grew fewer with each passing quarter. The value fell first. Then the foundations. Then more value. The county surveyor, arriving in Wellington boots and departing without them — the tarn, he said, had claimed them, settling the question of ownership — attributed the subsidence to prolonged saturation. The water, he reported, had enlarged itself across both properties since the late unpleasantness. He diagnosed the condition as Loss of Structural Integrity — the selfsame phrase, I was told, employed by the coroner, though in reference to a different kind of resident. No — the coroner resided not across the street but in Charlottesville, some four miles distant, and I mention this only because the proximity of that family had already been credited with enough. The gutters had since followed. The fall of my credit, which I had believed immovable, began as what the bank described as "a correction," by which they meant a descent, by which I mean a plunge into conditions I had not thought possible for a man who had never once been late with a payment. The Farmers Bank of Virginia had not yet asked me to return the 1839 almanac they presented at Michaelmas with my name stamped upon the cover, which I chose to interpret as reassurance. The almanac told me nothing it had not already told the Ushers.

I am #spent. My allowance is #spent.

I leave it to the @bsky.app #readers to decide if this #gothic #horror story is worth their time, and the spending of it.

#poem #poetry #prose #writing #emoetry #microfiction #inkmine #poemsabout #vss365
@thebrokenspine.co.uk