flashing lights, slamming doors, honking, yelling, saws running, drills cracking concrete, exhaust thrumming from tailpipes, people jostling against one another, spaces filled with things, towering buildings, phones ringing, beeping notifications, vibrating messages, words tumbling from mouths speakers microphones, obligations that pull, responsibilities that push, attention divided, regrets made, promises kept, secrets confided, stress shared, overwhelming tasks, reminders that bind

They end here.

Wash these cobwebs from my body with water touched by light.

Plant my feet in rich dark earth.

Let me grow where the power lines end and the unending world begins.

Michael is a husband, father, writer, poet, and aspiring author. He finds time to scribble down his thoughts in the dead of night, between ghosts and night owls. If you’d like to read more of his poetry follow the link here. Or to visit his full blog, ‘The Ink Owl’ click here.

Music as comforter
enters my soul
Enlightens my mind
making me whole

I am pleased to announce that I shall be appearing on Vancouver Co-op Radio’s The World Poetry Reading Series, http://worldpoetry.ca, at 1:10 pm PST, on Thursday 9 August.

I shall be discussing (and reading from) my forthcoming collection “The Writer’s Pen And Other Poems”.

I am grateful to Ariadne Sawyer of The World Poetry Reading Series for her kind invitation to appear on her show. I hope that you will join me this coming Thursday.

For those of you who are unable to do so, I shall link to the podcast of the show once this becomes available.

In April, I posted my thousandth post on this blog. To celebrate, I will share here all my short stories. Every couple of weeks, I’ll be posting one story from my celebrated Exciting Destinies series for you to enjoy. With over 30 stories so far, I hope you’ll have lots of fun in the coming months!

This week, it’s You Can’t Fight a Prophecy from You’re In For A Ride.

Click here to read some more free stories.

You Can’t Fight a Prophecy

Image: Pixabay

“You can’t fight a prophecy,” the wrinkly shaman says and gives me a toothless grin. The shrug accompanying his words shakes the feathers around his neck, making him look like a frail old bird trying to give flight.

Fight it? I don’t even understand it.

“What’s he say, Doc?” the large boulder of a man standing behind me asks. His camouflaged face and broad…

Hamlet is a loser. He turns out to be completely inadequate to the call to action of his father’s ghost, who wants to be rightfully revenged by his son. Yet, he had accurately chosen the most effective words to describe how his brother Claudius had atrociously murdered him and the “horrible“consequences on his body in order to stir Hamlet’s sense of indignation. Eventually, as if he doubted his son’s inclination to action, the ghost even warns him saying: “If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not“. If. He was not wrong in mistrusting his son, in fact, once alone on stage and soon after a first flame of rage Hamlet hesitates and ponders :”The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite,That ever I was born to set it right!”

Can the words of a ghost, even if in the shape of a beloved…

Rachael and Christopher were my children
I carried them within my womb,
I loved them with all the love I could give them.

I knitted garments to warm, protect them,
Knowing they would be coming soon,
Rachael and Christopher were my children.

Their tiny bodies within me were hidden,
In my heart there was always room,
I loved them with all the love I could give them.

One dark black day I was hit and beaten,
By my own mother, they were doomed,
Rachael and Christopher were my children.

Things were forced into me, I was bidden,
Never to make life again, I was scum,
I loved them with all the love I could give them.

It didn’t take long, soon I was ridden,
I saw their bodies in the gloom,
Rachael and Christopher were my children.

In anguish I weep, when you hear me, listen,
My babies are now…