When I grow up…
Stormtroopers at parade rest
X-wing fighter
This week’s wordpress photo prompt is “Treat”. What a treat to see all the awesome costumes at Hazy’s annual event – Air and Scare. The children were an added treat.
Tag: Halloween
Last Descent #poetry #photography #Halloween
Too soon, I must
this shadowy trek
to earthen ground
in windy gust
so all alone
a vacant step
I make my last
my six foot home
you lay one rose
upon this patch
a bid “farewell”
descent’s atone
I had a delightful visit to Edgar Allen Poe’s home. I was hoping some of my shots would be useful.
Today’s prompt for the DP Challenge at WordPress – Descent
Happy Halloween to my photographer friends!!!
Horror melts in your mouth not in your hand #art #horrorweek #fiction #Halloween
In my art and art history studies, we often compared and contrasted the work of different artists. When you compare an artist against himself, you deal more with his style than differences. If you look at the two pieces there are many similarities: the visual tension, the use of black and white to create an abysmal feeling, and an inability of the subjects to speak. One thing I thought curious, as Kubicki tends to deal with the darker, captive images, is the direction or flow of the two images. On the top image do feel the eyes trying to grasp what is beyond? I thought of a child staring out of a window on a rainy day – the pathos is so thick. Now look at the movement in the second image: There is a tense inner struggle. The bound figure is fighting and the more he fights the more inward he seems to be pulled. There is a great sense of a tug of war going on. No words are conveyed out of either’s lips, but one speaks with his vacant eyes and the other in his fight with the bandages.
There’s so much more I could say. I’ll leave you with this – what are beneath the layers in each of Kubicki’s subjects? Are there just more layers…
“That damned fog is thick, Jack. Chest high and dense enough to cut it with a knife.”
The bartender pours another beer for Fred and sits it in front of him. “Damned thick, Fred! I, for one, am not leaving here until it’s gone. Shit! You can’t see the *** road anyway. How could you get home in this?”
“Funny how it waited until the place was packed before the fog rolled in. It’s almost like the fog can think,” Fred says…
… A murmuring of approval spreads throughout the bar, everyone knowing that on nights like this, evil things happen, and it appears the Inn is smack-dab in the middle of a festering of growing horror. It’s not just the fog that’s thick tonight: the impending terror awaiting them all sits heavy in the air. The stench of old injustices and the need for retribution is everywhere. For some of them, it is difficult to breathe, the presence lying thick and heavy on their chests…
… Through the fog he comes, easily 6 feet 5 inches and broad as an ox. The heavy moisture falls below his massive chest, and his eyes, black as coal, focus on the Inn. A broad grin covers his square jaw and face, and he slowly walks towards the beckoning door. “
~ Blaze McRob is a regular writer for Pen of the Damned. The short story Old Van Tassel in its entirety is excellent with a twist. (click the link you can read the story in full)
you can find Blaze hanging out on Facebook
his blog is Blaze’s Blog
and on twitter @wyomingbob
The art by Jarek Kubicki is an excellent pairing with the Pen of the Damned horror writers. You can find his Numbers Collection here.
“A complete, debilitating darkness veils my vision. For several moments, I wait, hoping that my eyes simply need to adjust, but no details emerge from the ink-black void.”…
…”Where am I? Is this a dream?”
“I experience nothing but total darkness in either direction.”…
“Ice crystals bloom inside my skull and my eyes bulge, still seeing nothing. My ears twitch and tingle in wait of a sound. Then a sound came.
A muffled string of words calling from the void, too distorted to comprehend despite their utterance so close to my ear. My entire body jerks. Startled and instantly terrified, I start screaming. My shrieks, too loud in the confined space, shoot spikes through my eardrums, but that pain is overshadowed by the agony coming from my fingers as I pull at the seam. I feel my nails tear free as a paper-thin beam of light slices into my eyes.”
~Tyr Kieran
@tyrkieran
This story and the art went so well – I just had to show them off together. Beyond Trapped can be read in its entirety here. It’s a must!
Tyr you get some extra horror love this week.
Blaze McRob is not only an acclaimed writer of Horror but behind the mask he does much good for so many people and causes. He is the mind and heart behind Visionary Press.
Recent releases: Snow Blood
Beware the Mold released in the summer 
Jarek Kubicki’s” The Art of Numbers” will be available for purchase on November 3rd!!!
Halloween #haiku #photography
Sunny disposition
someone wants to cut you
Hide your face
Places to hide
any mask take your choice
just for one night
The Carpe Diem time glass prompt is Halloween. We are given a window of time to construct a haiku. The sands of time are running…
The Art of Horror #horrorweek #art #pen #horrorwriters
This week is set aside for the darker edge of life. Why not combine the two disciplines of art and writing to see what gets dug up!!!
What is horror for writers and artists? Darkness is in the air, it suspends one against its will, it hides in the shadows, but it doesn’t stay there. Darkness awakens the sleeper casting him into a delusional dream or awakens the dreamer into a place he tries to claw away from.
Why write it? why paint it? I ask this question often. There are too many answers and none the same (and some darker than others.)
Is horror just about Monsters?
“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”
― Clive Barker
― Clive Barker
“Tired. So tired… Confusion and disorientation numbed his mind like cotton wrapped hands. Thoughts felt like a jumble of dusty moths bumped plaintively against a dim light bulb. He couldn’t grasp where he was – what he was doing. His limbs felt stiff and unused.
The stony grip of anxiety seized his mind and burned in his lungs. A deep breath was impossible. Thin air pulled slowly through his nose, bringing with it the smell of fresh clothing and an acrid smell that reminded him of a dissected frog. His anxiety doubled when he realized his mouth wouldn’t open. A hand finally responded to his slow mind. It moved sluggishly, fumbled around haphazardly until it found his lips. Glue. Somebody had glued his lips shut while he slept. Anger and the inability to get a full breath drove his fingers to tear at his lips with a horrible frenzy.”
Zack Kullis is a published author and writes regularly for Pen of the Damned.
The excerpt above is from the short story “The Manipulator.” The story can be read here.
Blog: Official Site for Zack Kullis, author of Dark Fiction
Twitter: @ZKullis
Andrew Wyeth
” He did not leave, that night on New Year’s Eve, because there was nowhere else for him to go. There is nowhere else when he hears every ragged wheeze, wherever he is; the shuddering breaths of a world on the brink of expiration. As best he can remember he has always heard these sounds. He did not always know what they were, or what it meant to hear the death-rattle of the stones and the trees and the earth, but he felt them all the same, and stood slightly apart from everyone else because of this, while the others ran laughing after one another, or played hopscotch, or made daisy-chains in the grass, oblivious…
… “On paper, darkness shines. Words convey savagery with the finesse of bright bouquets. Language illuminates the broken back of the world, its atrophied limbs, its eyeless face: a rotten leviathan floating in space, quivering with parasites while it sings its last whale-song through an ocean of distant stars, almost inscrutable except by those who dare to pause in their furious lives and, for a moment, listen.”
Thomas Brown is a published author and regular writer for Pen of the Damned. Hope you enjoyed the except from the short story “All These Voices.” It can be read in its entirety here.
Twitter: @TJBrown89
blog: tbrownonline.wordpress.com
This wonderfully depictive work of art is by contemporary artist( from Bucharest) Oana Cambrea
It became my ghost, that lullaby—its virulent strain infecting not only the cloaked woods that surrounded us, but also the ears upon which it fell. It haunted us all, wormed its way into our brains and cored our frightened eyes to hollowed orbs. Unlike the other girls, who mewled in dread as those tinny chords crackled out from the absolute darkness, I sought to discover its origin…
…The creature sniffed my body. I gagged upon its putrid breath. Its moist snout moved slowly along my neck as a sharp talon grazed the top of my shoulder. Feeling. Touching. Pinpricks of white twinkled in one eye—the starlight reflected back from within its inky, remorseless orb. It peered upward, measuring my response. Urine trickled along my legs and I dropped the knife to the ground.
All those same people who scold you,
what they’d give just for the right to hold you
Joseph Pinto is the Co-founder and writes regularly for Pen of the Damned. The short story “Lullaby”(excerpt above) can be read here.
Blog: Author Joseph A. Pinto’s Horror (and things not so horrible) Blog
Purple Hope (Pancreatic Awareness website)
Twitter: @JosephAPinto
Zack Kullis on Amazon
Thomas Brown’s Lynnwood on Amazon
Joseph Pinto Dusk Summer on Amazon
“
Beyond the Shadows #haiku #photography
Toady at Carpe Diem – Garry Gay shares his impressions of autumn and Halloween.
Here is an example of thinking out side of the box or misdirection.
My skeleton
going for a walk
in the cemetery
©Garry Gay
This poem has both a subject of death, yet a dash of humor. A misdirection if you will as my skeleton is still living yet visiting the graveyard. Enjoy the environment of the rich colors and creepy Halloween decorations of October and create your on haunting misdirection’s.
following shadows
graveyard keeps its secrets
night for pranksters
A complicated prompt by Garrry Gay today at Chevrefeuille’s Carpe Diem – Outside the box/ Misdirection
Moon Beast #halloween #shortstory #children’sfiction #amwriting
“It was long ago when the world was young.The Moon some say was bright and full once or twice a year but then she would be gone for weeks at a time.” My grandmother said with a quiet, serious voice.
I closed my eyes. Grandmother told great stories.
“There were fewer people, no one to protect our world or our universe. I do not think when Mars chased Luna that he intended to sire a beast. But beast he was.”
“How can such silvery beauty as I spawn repulsion?” she screamed as she flung him into the abyss of night.
“I am sorry, Luna. Please forgive me” the love struck Mars pled.
“Our love created that foul thing. We cannot be together, ever.”
“So Mars retreated to his corner of the Solar System looking each evening for a glimpse just a whisper of her , his dearest Luna.”
“A star took pity on the child as he somersaulted through the dark. She sheltered him, giving him time to grow. The star did not intend for its kindness to be met with such hatred. The beast devoured the star and grew strong.”
“You fool he sneered you should have let me die. He shook his fist at his mother, a piece of the star hanging from his mouth.”
“The beast found himself on a planet called Earth. It was green,full of life. The beast could not stand the light so in daylight he would vanish. At night dogs, chickens even people would be found missing. None wanted to believe the folk-lore.
“Grandmother, I simpered how can we be safe from this beast? I will never go outside at night again.”
“There, there child. Listen…
For some time the dark beast roamed the earth never content with his destruction. He would stoke the earth’s innards and make rocks so hot that it flowed from mountain tops into villages below. It was not enough. The Moon Beast for so he was called by the Universe would grab the sinews of the earth and pull shaking the ground, making worlds tumble.”
“We must stop this” Venus looked with a jealous side glance at Luna.
“I have no power over him, none at all,” Luna cried.
“There must be a solution” said the usually disregarded Pluto.
“He has one weakness, have you not seen?” The Sun rumbled. “He cannot be in the light of my rays. Perhaps I could shine day and night.”
“But you cannot Father Sun,” Saturn wrung her hands.
“Luna, on the nights that you come out our son shrinks in strength. Your beauty makes him sick. Perhaps if you shine each night, he will die.” Love burned in Mar’s eyes.
“How can I destroy my son?” Luna despaired.
“You must” the people of the earth chorused to the Heavens.
“What did Luna do Grandmother?”
“Sadly, the celestial mother put on her silvery shawl to steal herself against the cold night air and kept a nightly vigil. The beast could not stand her light with time he grew weak. Luna too was growing weak. Mars saw it and wrapped his warm arms around her once or maybe twice a month to give her rest. It is said that on dark, moonless all hallow’s eve night’s very strange things happen. No one knows for sure if the beast died. Luna continues to shine. She hopes her son is still alive. She sighs in relief each time her dearest Mars comes so that she might rest. Tonight, grandson, if the moon is hidden you must run to your home. Quickly now and keep your doors locked; I have heard strange tidings.”
The next morning a mournful wail into the a blood-red dawn.
“Luna WHYYYYYY?” Continue reading “Moon Beast #halloween #shortstory #children’sfiction #amwriting”
Undone #poetry #photography #art
Slain
by your sharp edged heart
well aimed piercing
dart
*
Dripping
off the edge of my page
blood flows free at this
stage
*
Alone
none to hold back the pain
too late to catch bloody
rain
*
Undone
mere ashes in your hands
fiend, my death so long
planned
Art and Photograph “Undone” © L. Moon 2013
Memories in a box #haiku #photography
All that remained
she lived in another time
memories in a box
*
memories in a box
one night set free
no holding back ghosts
reminders not needed
the world could see
The prompt at Verse First (hosted by Kim Nelson) is Ghosts, Spirits, Scares. I hope you feel the presence of a ghost in my verse today.
We were instructed to write in 31 words or 31 lines in honor of October 31st. I chose using the haiku and tanka to write 31 lines.
Tanka: is written by one poet and not by two (as is the echo form of the Tan Renga) the syllables count is: 5-7-5-7-7
Fenced In #haiku #photography
ominous silence
golden wheat field sentries
final resting place
Silent rose
thorny fenced in memories
rusting tears
The prompt for Carpe Diem is Fence and its the week of Halloween so I am having some fun with cemeteries, death and the like.
