Occasional ravings

Talkin’ about my A-A-Aliteration

/ Doug Jacquier / 10 Comments

Pleased to finally find a home for this piece of nonsense at The Gorko Gazette . It will appear in their autumn collection (northern hemisphere), spring edition (southern hemisphere).

F’ing Freddie

Freddie Stare was a fabulous finesser of foot-tapping fantasia, with his fascinating rhythms filling the gravity-free firmament after he found Fionnuala Fagan, the famed fox-trotter from Fenagh.

However, after a time, he’d decided he could fare well without fair Fionnuala and was making a fine fettle of flying solo on his seemingly-feathered feet and was often to be seen playing footsies with a wide array of footloose floozies.

Not to be fobbed off, Fionnuala furiously fanned her desire for fatal revenge and fossicked through files on pharmacology, seeking to distill a phial of foul poison to fix Freddie’s fate, knowing full well he would return to the fold in the future.

She made up a tincture of fenugreek, fennel, feverfew, fo-ti root and shrooms, disguising its fetid taste with fruit juice and fizzy Fanta.

Eventually, Freddie became fatigued and grew too floppy for fandangos, fornications and frolics so he presented himself to Fionnuala, with fraudulent fork-tongued promises of faithfulness, in order to charm her into ministering to his frail and failing frame, for old friendship’s sake.

Fionnuala was not to be fooled by Freddie’s flattering fakery but feigned concern and bade him drink her felicitous tincture, which she said she’d named in his honour as ‘Freddie’s Fantasia’. Soon after Freddie fell flat on his face and Fionnuala fed him to the fiery furnace.

Min Min is no more

/ Doug Jacquier / 9 Comments

Dear small but perfectly formed band of followers, it is with some regret that I advise that the Min Min Challenge will no longer continue. The technical challenges that befogged this bear of little brain are not the cause. I’ve simply decided to take my own writing seriously for a while and remove as many self-inflicted distractions as I can. It’s been fun while it lasted and it’s me, not you. Fare well and write on.

Japandemonium. A poem for Fukushima.

/ Doug Jacquier / 1 Comment

My poet friend, Bill Engleson, from Denman Island in British Columbia, Canada, penned this superb piece and reads it sublimely. Enjoy.

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Da_iPXvHEU30%26fbclid%3DIwAR2Ez4pBueCnOVu59lKIYsCH6oO9_4SQTGcxQQMo_z9GLFeiymCszd8hebc&h=AT2NP6gF-Ml1pux2Lmx1UZ6XDy5wXIpIHvI_7Yjl1FarAQCRg_j_c8x2WD6uOHFGsBE2dFf-ILGenAgGOb2BagITUWLazqxszeM7hk6yfFiSHqTmQeKFvuCeYMbFI92j5o3Mfis3iWALcb-bkE-I&tn=H-R&c[0]=AT21NxtBfMFvlLGFyfLO-q4AiTklSdDy1dNrr3hnd_MIgsu1Tu5XhuBdJXdjT6TJ7tnbr8ZwnpSnh46dHV33rcrxCk4xjV0LP2_lGHdO64Bo4MGZH1J_EkuItWhLvbFX9HESHYOMVUNSJjmL1_7tfGyvRTo

Here’s the text for you to listen along.

I crawl into a vacant cubbyhole

in my brain (I have plenty of storage space there)

and sit cross-legged on the part of my jellied

noggin that can visualize;

I am by the sea. On a Friday afternoon,

there is a rumble, a tumble, an angry grumble

somewhere, off in the distance,

beyond my sight,

some devil , cresting

some sea ulcer erupting…

and I shimmy and shake.

I want to run

away from the sea, away from the rising wave tower,

soaring like some grotesque Godzilla, some wide-winged Mothra,

some namby-pamby Bambi meeting Tsunami Gorgonzola Godzilla,

the drilla killa,

a high speed freight train doom-zooming in from the spoiled and twitchy

sea; this irradiated gorilla-whale,

this hulking nuclear devil

this tsunami-commie who has no purpose

other than to lumber in,

in all its atomic beauty,

to come juggernauting over the

people who live by the sea and have expected nothing

less since Hiroshima Nagasaki Mon Amour…

I know it is coming.

Even in my mental exercising,

my legs rubberize,

I stall,

my bones and my being freeze up.

I see myself, footsteps in front of me,

feet falling ahead of me,

helmet cam capturing the way I will

run, fearing to look back,

knowing Godzilla fella

will scoop me up and rip me

apart and drown me,

and toxify me,

and break me into a million human twig parts

and eat me and kill me.

My Ja-panic escalates

as I sit cross-legged in the crawl-space part of my jellied noggin

that visualizes;

cross-legged and marvelling at the courage

or the inertia,

that would keep millions living by the

sea knowing Godzilla is always

impatient, always ready to roll;

to roll in and crush.

And I think,

as we all likely think,

there, but for the Ace of

Spades, or better grades,

or a different air raid,

or a jug of grog,

or a bump on a log,

or the face of a

dog, or

the Grace of any old

God, go I

Time to press Pause on Min Min

/ Doug Jacquier / 5 Comments

Dear Followers and well-wishers

With a new prompt due tomorrow, I’ve decided to press Pause on the Min Min Weekly Challenge for a week. Despite my own best efforts and those of a small but loyal band of followers, it hardly seems to be lighting up the writing universe.

There are many possible reasons for this, including:

  • There are just too many prompts out there for people to keep up.
  • (Up to) 250 words is too much for people’s limited attention spans these days and/or it falls into the Valley of Death between microfiction and a proper short story.
  • Posting to your own blog and then sending the link elsewhere is too complicated and perhaps should be simplified to just posting direct to a page, similar to Carrot Ranch and other pages.
  • Being an (almost) no holds barred page, some people are afraid of what they might encounter.
  • People prefer the ‘soft’ challenges on other pages that allow them to simply relate anecdotes or homilies.
  • I’m an impatient old bugger and I should wait for it to grow organically, even at a snail’s pace.
  • Perhaps I should consider becoming a publisher myself and then at least perhaps be able to offer a wider audience (because, as you know, what the world desperately needs is a new litmag.).

Let me know what you think, in as few or as many words as you like, in your usual fearless fashion. It would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Doug