55 words

55 Words

This is an exercise that a writers' group uses. We develop a story, poem idea and express the whole thing in exactly 55 words excluding the title. 

It is good training to be succinct and to use the space available.

Here are some of mine, they vary from silly, depressing or sad, to attempts at profundity and wit.

Churchill and my Granddad

Granddad hated Churchill.

At 14, his father pulled him off a ship to Gallipoli. His pals were killed.

Churchill broke the strikes in the depression. Granddad was unemployed.

U-boats put Brits on tight rationing. When Churchill came to town, his personal luxury foods came too.

I admired them both, but I loved Granddad.

Born too late

Cougars were a recent invention, due to the empowerment of women.

At 15, I would have been desperate to meet a cougar. Before texts or Face Book, we would have been safe back then. I might have felt the same at 40 or even 50

At 62 my cougars might be 90. Misery!

Costa Rica – The power of nature or what they did not tell us when we bought the house.

Each moment different, each moment a joy

Dark slashing, lashing rain

Explosive storms, lightening, flickering, stabbing,

Thunder blasting, rattling the panes

Water rushing, tumbling, foaming

Trees cracking and crashing

Earth trembling, walls shaking

Smoking Volcanoes…suspiciously large rocks in the garden

Musings on the body

400 species of microorganisms live on the forearm, myriads of others elsewhere. Body parts comprise specialized small creatures. Digestion requires a zoo.

Are we mere walking reefs?

Aliens with microscopic vision might see the space between our atoms. Could they tell the separation between a chair and its occupant?

We will return to dust.

Tranquilo

The plumber breaks the kitchen cabinet. Tranquilo.

The furniture maker never calls back, Tranquilo.

The Van driver blocks the road, chatting to his friends. Tranquilo.

Axle breaking holes in the road reappear. Tranquilo.

Abandoned dogs are starving. Tranqulio.

We queue round the block for the documents. Tranquilo.

I slit my throat, no more Tranquilo.

Trapped in Costa Rica

“We love it here”, they say through gritted teeth.

We discover that they are still trying to sell in the US and, since four years, here.

They were robbed six times. They find costs high. They have little income.

They want to go home. They cannot afford to. They live hand to mouth.

Pura Vida!

 Further musings on existence

We are born puny and helpless. A neuroscientist tells me that every cell in our body is replaced, sometimes many times. Our attitudes and experience change the way we think.

As we are all different people now, should we prosecute war criminals in their dotage?

Can we ever forgive both left and right for their errors?

A Dilemma

Tax evasion is a national sport. Taxation and payment systems are deliberately obscured. Spending is corrupt, lavish and ineffective.

As everywhere, ministers, officials and the rich are champion evaders.

If rich foreigners evade, are we just sensible or depriving poor Ticos of the little that trickles down to them?

What should we do?

Digging a deeper hole

‘Fools rush in’. Risk averse expats rent or buy well within their means. In extremis, they can bail out.

It would be nice to improve the garden; build a pool; install solar heating; build a path; add more security.

Dig too deep and you will be mired here! Is that such a bad thing?

On the Lam

Forget the lies of the realtors and retirement advisors who inveigled us here. New friends mask their hiding from the IRS, alimony, child support or prosecution.

Others invent colorful pasts, improving on banal reality. This is a game we can all join in.

Did I ever tell of the time I was James Bond?

In pursuit of happiness or the taming of an alpha male

I tried booze.

I tried drugs.

I tried sex.

I danced with death.

Various combinations were all fun, but none quite hit the spot.

Hell, I tried them all, time and again, with the ever diminishing ecstasies.

Then I found true love, or it found me, undeserved and unlooked for.

 “Love is all you need”.

Who needs fairy lights?... or romanticism degenerates.

Monsoon rain,

Sunset wreathes deep valleys in mist and the sky in golden clouds.

Pines, bananas and palms are silhouetted.

Bats hunt against the dusk sky.

Night sounds, a cacophony of cicadas and nightjars

A thousand fireflies twinkle sexual messages

“Come and get me! My aedeagus explodes with desire!”

“Oh flashy one, take me now!”

 Simone, the Parrot, invents perpetual motion

Ivy buys healthy cereal. Simone spits it on the floor. She gets a tastier brand. My breakfast is the hated, cardboard product. It should be called ‘Horse Mix’.

Simone likes Sun Flower seeds, tossing some from the patio. Sunflowers grow below, to feed Simone with their seeds.

“Let us recycle Simone as Pie”.

Ivy demurs.

The Big Bang

We sit in Adirondack chairs, sipping Dry Martinis, watching the storm.

Flash! Crash! The loudest bang we ever heard smashes down near the house. We are deafened.

A squillion volts enter two pines a hundred feet up, superheating the sap. They explode, hurtling bark and splinters.

Later, still darkness, silent lightening flickers in high clouds.

The Human Race. Cheery thoughts, prompted by the terminal illness of various close friends.

We toddle unaware.

We run, swim, jump and climb. John drowns.

High speed motorcycling. Joe crashes. It cannot happen to us.

Older colleagues die. We take their jobs.

Friends are disappearing fast, cancer or infarction.

Others toddle again, on mechanical joints.

Our turn is coming.

Wrinkled faces, crumbling bodies, accepting inevitability.

Every breath, nearer death.

Rant

“Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.”  An old nursery rhyme celebrating events in 1605.

The capture and execution of thirteen dissidents, attempting to kill the King and Parliament in Westminster, is celebrated annually.

Many wanted to rebel against their inept and corrupt elites in the sixties. Most went on to lead worthy, bourgeois lives. In old age they rant at the TV.

Perhaps Guido Fawkes was right after all?

Aid for a developing country?

Costa Rica receives technology and advice from the IRS. Its government wants to know every penny Ticos spend. Spy drones will reveal those dodging the luxury tax on houses.

1984 finally comes here.

What excellent opportunities such technology provides for greater corruption amongst the police and officials.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Does this aid help?

Schadenfreude in a Fools’ Paradise

Smugly drinking cocktails, we watch yet another tropical sunset, painting the clouds in reds and orange.

“What a mess the world’s in. Our friends, their savings stolen by governments and banks, sit freezing.”

“Terrible, paying for armies and drones to stir up hornets’ nests!”

Poas rumbles. Our scene is obliterated in a pyroclastic flow.

Costa Rica Ennui- The Lotus Eaters

Drifting through the lees of life.

Party-time, same shorts and old T shirt for every party.

So elegant! Mindless of bad legs and fat ass.

Chat about, not addressing, the World’s problems.

Leave on the TV.

Boca food is dire, but easier than cooking.

Dozing in the hammock, reading vacuous trash.

Achievements today, nothing.

Ernesto Che Guevara, a retrospective

Che, iconic champion of the proletariat, you acted whilst others talked. Eschewing middle class respectability, you led violent revolutionaries in Africa and Latin America against corrupt elites.

Oh Che, if you had escaped CIA orchestrated execution, would you be proud of poor, decayed Havana.

Your dream was poisoned by communist stifling of freedom and enterprise.

Literary events and Book Fares

Frustrated librarians toil among the musty books, tending brattish kids, pushy moms and indigents, reading magazines to keep warm.

Publishing is dominated by intelligent women.

Books are full of romantic inspiration.

 Only now, I hear that literary conventions are hotbeds of rampant sex. Why do I write so late in life, with my wife watching?

The Next Naive Wave or Paradise Lost

New retirees to Costa Rica mingle, full of hope.

“We come from....

“We came because...

“We are renting in....

“I worked in....”

Shoot me, before I say,

“You’ll last X months”.

Better, shoot the realtors, lying about National Geographic.

The climate sucks.

Social security is insufficient.

The thieves are the cops and the lawyers!

Good Intentions and reality

“Let’s pass a law to become greenest and cleanest.”

The propaganda sounds great.

New taxes pay for enforcement.

The fields burn.

Gold miners are in the parks.

Cops share the turtle eggs.

Few pay taxes.

Corrupt ministers siphon the money into their businesses.

Tourists are being conned!

This is just a delusional developing country.

Droning on about drones

The unasked question,

“Are extra territorial assassination and collateral civilian casualties by robots either legal or morally justifiable?”

If the answer is yes, then it must be OK for other nations to send them to DC, London and Tel Aviv.

This is asymmetric morality. We can deploy nukes, torture and invade, but others must not.

Papal Bull

The Church taught so the child thought that:

white or black smoke was a miracle;

the whisky breathed priest’s inappropriate hand was God’s will;

suffering, poverty and exploitation were divine tests;

rewards would come in heaven;

evil would be punished;

this religion was the only true religion.

Some children grew up.

Others chose not to.

What are the old for?

We: passed on our genes; raised kids; retired.

What use are we now?

If the kids don’t need us for babysitting, jobs about the house or funds, their selfish genes focus on the next generation.

The sooner we die and pass on the money, the better.

Flee. Party till we drop in Costa Rica.

Luck and social justice

The greedy justify their immense incomes and wealth.

They cite market forces, their superior, skills, intelligence or entrepreneurial rewards.

Truth is they were lucky.

They had good genes, upbringing and nationality or merely luck in their market bets.

Motivate them a little, but remove those who block redistribution. Shoot them as a last resort.

Time bending

Atomic clocks measure objective time to a zillionth

For Einstein time and space were curvy

Now, I see that time moves in kangaroo jumps.

It is slow when there is little change.

It leaps forward on new love,

on divorce or relocation.

Kid’s summers last forever.

It accelerates with age.

Then it stops, for us.

Next year the revolution with be on Tuesday  4th of June

Politicians are there, because they know better than us, in deciding everything for us.

They strive to centralise decisions, seek power and raise more funds

Their morals and loyalty are available for money or advancement.

The only way to remove them is revolution.

New people who know better then arise.

We must institutionalize regular revolutions.

The keys to writing success.

1.    Be Earnest Hemingway or better R.J. Rawling or best God.

2.    Identify your characters with a memorable characteristic, e.g. three buttocks.

3.    Include suspense. Will the parrot attempt to bonk the Llama or not?

Will the zombie pedophiles beat the superhero extra terrestrials in mortal combat with exploding loofahs?

4.    Well endowed women wearing kinky boots.

5.    Be lucky