Tag: imagination

Picture Prompt from Punk Noir magazine

Warehouse Warning

Flash Fiction 300 words or less picture prompt

I climbed through the hole in the wall, it’d been used as a get away so many times to escape the police. Years ago. The market was disused and nobody would find me here. If they did I knew what would happen. I’d seen what happened to the people that crossed these guys. It wasn’t pretty. 

Keeping low and slow all the way through there wasn’t a sound, except my heart going faster than I knew possible. But there was only the steady plink, plink, plink of water coming through a hole in the roof and hitting the uneven floor.

I stopped just for a second to catch my breath, knowing that once I got through the main doors it was a sprint to the river and I couldn’t afford to take it slow or careful out there. No stopping for breath then. 

The last pillar. I knew this place too well. There was still a stain on the floor where the last guy in here, bled out. It wasn’t cleaned up, so mottled brown stains were on the floor. It’s probably still there to this day. Part of me felt semi-safe, the other not at all. 

Rounding the last pillar, I knew I was feet away from escaping. But the doors were open. I could see the pier, but I shouldn’t have been able to. The hairs on the back of my neck warned me to take care.

I was dazzled as two car headlights went on. Like looking directly at a firework the lights blurred my vision. A figure emerged from it, one I recognised well. Disbelief ran through me as I heard the words ‘End of the line, Charlie boy’ as my wife pulled out a gun and fired. 

©Ailsa Cawley 2022

Advertisement

Walls close in 

I am entombed in this concrete world where houses rise 

They appear overnight it seems like monuments to no man 

Only a case in which to place, contain him 

Your world begins and ends here he is told  

This is usual, normal don’t wish for escape they tut 

Scold you as a child for your naivety for even thinking 

Imagining you could want anything other than this cage of plaster and dust 

Showing you only to what you will return one day 

Dust, earth a piece of something carried on air 

Shut yourself inside, or enter the gardens of highest fences 

Everything but barbed wire not as its billed to keep someone out 

Remove the scales from your eyes 

It is there only to keep you in the little allotted box 

Break the walls down, smash the fences to splinters 

And scratch your fingers with just one so you know you can still feel 

Escape the institution you were placed in and carve your own way 

You can do it. You can do it. You always could 

Stop the walls from closing in.
Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Return to the woods

There’s not a soul around and it’s just getting light
Watery sun trying to break through
Clouds not strong enough to stop the progression
She smiles as she tethers herself
With a cord unseen to the earth beneath her feet
Wriggling toes to feel the connection
That she needs to sustain her very being
Feeling the oneness as energy sparks
A sigh escapes her lips and her shoulders
Drop to let her breathe the very essence of this other realm
Her ankles are tickled as grass reaches
Beckoning her forth be with us again it seems to say
We belong to one realm
She lies next to a gnarled tree on a carpet of leaves
Her fingers trace patterns in the bark
Rejuvenation is here in her forest retreat
The place she is centred
She will return in the morning but sighs with the wind
And makes her way back to the place termed the real world
If only they knew….

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Creeping gloom

I watch it leech forth like a noxious gas
Wondering why nobody else seems to notice the cloud
Gathering slowly above, around
But who looks up when they still feel the suns warmth? 
Would you check to see it were there or trust
Do you ever see the fog coming at you to swallow you
Until it has you enmeshed inside
Then you panic and scan a horizon that can’t be seen
Heart racing because direction has deserted you
Surety all gone to hells own home
Hearing noises that weren’t there before you’d swear
Or maybe you just didn’t notice
Wrapped in your security blanket of sunshine and harmony
And you stumble afraid of what awaits
Here in the dark dank gloom
The biggest fear may be spending too much time with the monster
That resides in your head
Telling you this may be your ending place
Feel the hands that claw at you hand and foot
Trying to bind you to a place you’d rather not go
Quickening heart
Slowing steps
Body trying to give itself to the inevitable
Fear and gladness,  confusion reigns
What waits in the dark murk of a mind unhinged? 
Come inside
The voice lisps in your ear

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

The thorn that repels

You’re the thorn that smiles and then stabs hard
Thinking I’m unaware of you
You smile as if you mean it maybe in that split second
It’s genuine enough
And you keep harking back to anything you imagine happened
In the halls beyond the veil of time
Self centred pity removes the smile
Twisting it to suit you
For you try to wear two jackets simultaneously and they have melded
To and with you
You tell the world I am victim and victor
Garner the pity of the gullible
As you eat them alive snaffle snorting to yourself
At the fools who believed 
In your dreams you see only yourself
Hero and villain too clever to be caught by any means
Still not understanding that they’ve all turned away
Seen through your bullshit bravery
Your cringing at the touch of a human hand trying to help
Outrage they thought you mighty one needed that
And now alone no-one to repel
You cry because you are alone and misunderstood

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Tower of the doomed

It stood there,  he stood there pointing out the wonders
Of the prison block
I grant you the facade was marginally prettier
But it was shiny new
Unloved,  unlived in and the nearest thing to an ivory tower prison
So cardboard cutout she expected
The walls to shake in protest if she spoke
A false village all manmade and uniform
Rat run for the rat race
And the bedrooms are on the third floor the best is in the attic
Like bloody rapunzel without the hair she muttered
No ladder just a cardboard prison
She sees his excitement at lording it with the big
House,  car and I have arrived puffiness
Shuddered and felt the walls close in
If this was her prison she’d suffocate inside a week
Entombed in her box like an obelisk to someone else
He runs along describing the carpets and shades of beige
That can be used to make it look appetising
Like a cookie with no flavour
She can even hear the voice saying you’re trapped
In the labyrinthine tunnels forever
Then she makes her escape from the tower
And wonders what she is doing.
How she even got here

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Hidden sparkle of life

She’s effervescent and tinkles happy laughter
Musical notes dance across her river
Clouds darken the sunny smile which crumbles to dust 
Eyes bore into her daring her to challenge
Knowing that won’t happen
A self satisfied smirk twisting the veneer as order is restored
Restrictions imposed are adhered to
One look needed no more
From afar the watcher sees her hidden strength
Willing a rebellion
Happy to join forces with the now still musical form
Temporarily silenced
But not forever as she never forgets herself
As you might wish

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Eyes of a soul

What is it you see when you look into her burning copper eyes
That are slowly eroding to a dull grey
With each new hurt and disappointment etched forever
Like cuts in her very soul
She bleeds heavily at your feet prostrate for mercy
Yet you see nothing but sunshine and harmony
Or maybe you pretend because perfect is all
The only thing of interest
And human weakness is not for the likes of you
Searching for storybook happy endings that had no beginning
Terrified you may miss a thing more important
Than the eyes which trained on you
Tried to learn more before you bled her dry

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Boneyard of hope

I step in the boneyard tripping here and there
On a carefully placed bone
Left in the misplaced hope that I will fear
The other side of this place
Sure it is cold from the lack of life and sunlight
Only a dusty sand carpet
Exactly as the makers intended it barren and empty
I am warm without the sunshine
The bone at my feet is not one of human flesh
I can crush it with bare hands to dust
Call out to the winds that fear will not defeat this dream
However much it is dressed up as end times
To get through this I need only trust
And the bones of sand will wither and turn to dust

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Parallel lives

Alongside me for an age but living elsewhere 

Floating in your own bubble 

Of the perfection you thought you created whilst wreaking 

Havoc mixed with desolation 

And you call me to tell me you’re so perfectly irresistible 

Forgotten are the tears I cried 

Waved aside your hurtful words and shameful lies 

Things you thought me to stupid 

To ever comprehend are stored in my memory banks 

Packed in darkened boxes in recesses 

Shoved away messily for fear of their escape pulling me down 

I refuse to sink on this ship of fools 

You hoped to create from a patchwork quilt of sewn together lies 

Half truths and hurt  

Never a strong swimmer until the moment I was in danger 

Of being consumed by a fabricated world of parallel lives 

Cutting the water with arms like blades 

I fling myself upon a rock  

The solid thing to be my salvation in this sea of doom 

That I only noticed when I needed it. 
Ailsa 

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

%d bloggers like this: