Odin
Nov 3, 2008, 08:19 PM
Not sure if this belongs here, but ITT post your poetry/short stories/etc. I don't want to post in Gus' thread because A) that's about poetry specifically and B) R3p kinda (-)(-)(-)(-) it up.
Anyway, here's a piece that I wrote recently, "The Lamppost."
It’s a particularly foggy morning today. The fog, almost a grey soup, coats the ground. The sun just barely shines through the dense haze, dimly illuminating the dawn of the world. Nobody’s here yet, but that’s okay. It’s still early in the morning.
My friend, the lamp post, and I have discussions about philosophy around this time. We don’t talk in the human understanding of the term, rather we have a silent insight into what each other is thinking. Every day, we sit here, discussing whatever comes to mind to each other and whoever will listen. I don’t think that anybody that stops by here actually listens, though.
We both have been sitting here for as long as we can remember, him serving the night drivers with his light, and I serving the bus riders by providing a stop to rest at. Guardians of day and night, I suppose.
Look, people are coming. Not a whole lot, but not that many people come by this stop in the first place. The lamp post and I offer them whatever wisdom we can offer to whoever listens. Sometimes I wonder if they can even hear us.
As the sun rises, the fog starts to melt away, the grey soup draining from the air as the world becomes clearer. The bus should be here any minute now.
As the bus approaches, the lamp post and I discuss today’s driving conditions. Last night was a very hard rain, leaving the roads a slippery wet. Hopefully nobody will get hurt today.
The bus stops at me. My passengers unload and load onto the bus. The lamp post and I would like to talk to the bus, but he’s never here long enough.
The bus leaves as another car, a red sports car, speeds by past it. The car, reaching the bend, loses control. It swerves left and right, like a young boy trying to gain control of his bicycle. It drifts closer, closer, and…
The car crashes into my friend. The lamp post issues a final groan, perhaps his only spoken word, as he crashes into the ground, his lamp shattering as it smashes into the concrete.
The minutes that passed felt like an eternity. The time between my friend’s death and the ambulance arriving rivaled my entire life in terms of how long the time past.
The cleanup crew comes to pick up the deceased. The lamp post, of course. The man in the car walked away from the accident, with minimal damage to his vehicle. In an hour, the scene is done. Everything was back the way it was. Except, of course, for the absconding of my friend.
The day passes uneventfully. Well, every day was uneventful. Now, however, I have nobody to share the lack of events with, to create our own events. I stand alone, watching as more people enter me, leaving me for the busses that pass by. The grey morning turns into the blue sky of day, the blue shifting into oranges and reds.
Tonight’s another rainy night. The night is even darker without my friend’s light. I used to consider the night a dark and almost scary time, fearing vandals spraying graffiti all over my body.
The rain slows down and eventually stops, refreshing the trees and grass that surround me. It’s too bad that they don’t talk. Or maybe they do, but we don’t grok on the same plane. It’s a shame, I’d love to hear tree philosophy. It’s certainly been around far longer than whatever primitive concepts the lamp post and I have come up with.
The night turns back into day. The sun seems even more dim than it was yesterday, the fog perhaps thicker. Without the lamp post’s light, without his words, without his understanding, the world just seems a darker place.
It’s dark out today.
Anyway, here's a piece that I wrote recently, "The Lamppost."
It’s a particularly foggy morning today. The fog, almost a grey soup, coats the ground. The sun just barely shines through the dense haze, dimly illuminating the dawn of the world. Nobody’s here yet, but that’s okay. It’s still early in the morning.
My friend, the lamp post, and I have discussions about philosophy around this time. We don’t talk in the human understanding of the term, rather we have a silent insight into what each other is thinking. Every day, we sit here, discussing whatever comes to mind to each other and whoever will listen. I don’t think that anybody that stops by here actually listens, though.
We both have been sitting here for as long as we can remember, him serving the night drivers with his light, and I serving the bus riders by providing a stop to rest at. Guardians of day and night, I suppose.
Look, people are coming. Not a whole lot, but not that many people come by this stop in the first place. The lamp post and I offer them whatever wisdom we can offer to whoever listens. Sometimes I wonder if they can even hear us.
As the sun rises, the fog starts to melt away, the grey soup draining from the air as the world becomes clearer. The bus should be here any minute now.
As the bus approaches, the lamp post and I discuss today’s driving conditions. Last night was a very hard rain, leaving the roads a slippery wet. Hopefully nobody will get hurt today.
The bus stops at me. My passengers unload and load onto the bus. The lamp post and I would like to talk to the bus, but he’s never here long enough.
The bus leaves as another car, a red sports car, speeds by past it. The car, reaching the bend, loses control. It swerves left and right, like a young boy trying to gain control of his bicycle. It drifts closer, closer, and…
The car crashes into my friend. The lamp post issues a final groan, perhaps his only spoken word, as he crashes into the ground, his lamp shattering as it smashes into the concrete.
The minutes that passed felt like an eternity. The time between my friend’s death and the ambulance arriving rivaled my entire life in terms of how long the time past.
The cleanup crew comes to pick up the deceased. The lamp post, of course. The man in the car walked away from the accident, with minimal damage to his vehicle. In an hour, the scene is done. Everything was back the way it was. Except, of course, for the absconding of my friend.
The day passes uneventfully. Well, every day was uneventful. Now, however, I have nobody to share the lack of events with, to create our own events. I stand alone, watching as more people enter me, leaving me for the busses that pass by. The grey morning turns into the blue sky of day, the blue shifting into oranges and reds.
Tonight’s another rainy night. The night is even darker without my friend’s light. I used to consider the night a dark and almost scary time, fearing vandals spraying graffiti all over my body.
The rain slows down and eventually stops, refreshing the trees and grass that surround me. It’s too bad that they don’t talk. Or maybe they do, but we don’t grok on the same plane. It’s a shame, I’d love to hear tree philosophy. It’s certainly been around far longer than whatever primitive concepts the lamp post and I have come up with.
The night turns back into day. The sun seems even more dim than it was yesterday, the fog perhaps thicker. Without the lamp post’s light, without his words, without his understanding, the world just seems a darker place.
It’s dark out today.