Spooled Loose

Prose poem, fabulist fiction

Bird skull, crow-quill pen nibs drip oily blue well-ink on flesh worn, currency parchment. 

Pastel pennants hang from shipyard rope pulled taut between rival tug-of-war teams manned by midgets sporting pageboy hairdos.  

From a steeple spire vantage point, dressed in formal attire and playing Paganini’s violin, Satan stands witness to a flat earth, flat as an old Cadillac’s hubcap.

Rolling across a wrapper littered dashboard, an ugly duckling bobble-head toy and a plastic St. Christopher statue wrestle in mortal combat. 

Hot latin trumpets fire cruise-missile-high-notes into a dark tropical night as gyrating salsa dancers articulate their body’s into a wild, demon frenzy.

Television talisman broadcast images that shred light, distort sound and decimate reality like tropical hurricanes whip beach sand. 

Mind-thoughts crawl like bait worms in a greasy, paper bag cranium. Fun house mirrors feature menacing close-ups of nostril breathing faces. 

There’s a pause. 

A Police sketch artist renders patient notes while laying on a psychologist’s Freudian leather couch. He’s captured the archetypes accurately, trying to contain them on paper. But the sketches refuse two dimensional incarceration and spill off the page. They live, reincarnate, procreate and sidewind-scribble across the plush carpet. They slither under the locked oak door, freeing themselves to race through the shrink’s, professional building corridors. No one notices. The insane, haunting images blend in, mixing indistinguishable from all the other dervish spinning perceptions of reality spooled loose from society’s common, pedestrian throng.

Author's Note

A reworked oldie, I find wrestling prose good exercise for better fiction writing. The other part is hearing how readers interpret, if at all, these lines. I'm hoping this piece evokes something. Critiques and comments welcome.

Reviews

[Einstein Noodle]

oooooooooo very creative and original ... any one of your statements can be spun loose into its own avenue of story ... the theme is dark and steady .. for me it mounts with each separate line ..love the pause ... simply saying it works for me ... i needed it to let the imagery settle in a bit ... so many vivid creations .. packed back to back ... closing paragraph puts a purpose in this prose/story ... monsters in human population do exist ... un-noticed ... blended in ... ordinary .. until the horror in them is unleashed ... i like this .. so many really good words and phrases ... that work together to build a brooding darkness ... Happy All Hallows Eve :))))))
E.

[roarke]

Thank you EN for the read and comments. Writing this kind of prose helps make my fiction writing better, at least sweeps cobwebs out. You nailed the interpretation, and glad you enjoyed.

[Einstein Noodle]

i took an on-line class on short story writing (free from the U of Iowa) and we talked a lot about the connections between poetry, prose, short stories, screen plays etc. etc. and i thought it is very encouraging that it is so true ... we had to write a short story as we went through the class .. if you have a bit of time check it out and let me know what you think ... i learned what a lot of work must go into writing .. so much editing, re-writing etc. ... and the thread of setting, scene, characters and theme are present in all writings .. great stuff says i!
https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/rIGt2mAk3/2064232/
i have a vague ambition to expand on it ... but in all honesty find me self too lazy ;}

[barleygirl]

I know nothing about this kind of writing, so I can only give my impressions. I find that your widely-varying selection of details does not focus (for me) into any kind of narrative here. I love how you pick a wild array of unrelated possibilities & I guess it's a crap shoot as to whether it will "PING" on someone's cell tower of recognition. The final long paragraph, on the other hand, DOES have a focus, so it feels like a different reading journey altogether. The best part is your word play thru-out: "Rolling across a wrapper littered dashboard, an ugly duckling bobble-head toy and a plastic St. Christopher statue wrestle in mortal combat." *smile* Fondly, Margie

[roarke]

Hi M. Impressions are great, and this story prompted some from you. What kind of writing is this? I dunno. I usually write just "word photographs" and I'm told "that's no story"... It's not poetry, essay, fiction/story... etc. So what is it? You said it's an array of unrelated possibilities and I think that explains it best. I personally tend to "think in metaphor" which really boggles my own reality, kind of dyslexic interpretation of thought... and then what? eh? So I guess this piece is my attempt at assembling images I see over a period of time, the ones I choose to put in writing, and then the last para is another interpretation of how someone, say the police sketch artist tries to render my thoughts, in a psychiatrists office no less.... lol. And that's about all I got... and I wrote it. lol And to confuse things more, my impressions, like other peoples can change from one day to the next. When we put something to word, it kind of stops the liquid flow of life, then after reading, the flow starts again, but maybe not from the same place or moment. As I've most recently learned, the difference between "commercial" fiction and "literary" fiction and maybe word picture abstract prose... yeah, run a flag up the cell tower and see who salutes it. Thanks for the read and impressions.

[barleygirl]

This is a good explanation of how it might feel to write as you do . . . thanks for sharing! (((HUGS))) Have a great holiday season!

[SkinlessFrank]

Love it....though you left out the part where they slide open the protagonist's pancreas...such a deep paper cut

[roarke]

heh, and here I kept thinking it needed more salt... carnage of the mind will cause these lapses Frank... my sister called this "whack"... not sure if that's a compliment or a critique... either way thanks for the read and your great personal suggestions, always welcome.