writing – Page 2

Of Aunts and Thank You’s

November 9, 2025November 15, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry2 Comments

“Steve, I have some news” Beck said as I poked my head in the living room to her on the Beck couch to say “Hi” after what had been a frustrating but finally muddled through Friday.

“Aunt Anne passed away”

I was going to joke about something totally silly in my poking corners of living rooms with sisters on couches and then …

… pause … “Oh no … no” and I flashed to the late 90’s almost 00’s and felt guilty, immediately, as I hadn’t talked to Aunt Anne in too long.

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There were thank you cards that I would never send for wedding gifts I never kept (though there were a couple I would like to have, that fully loaded tool box filled with shit I would never need or know how to use for one) and feel guilty of for the longest of time and there was paperwork eventually that said the magic had passed well before its time or thank you card expectations suddenly no longer a thing, plus divorce numbers in graphs and charts and over multiple demographics helped me explain, painfully, fast endings and also just being lazy and hurt.

“Hey what time is it?”

“It’s now and you still haven’t sent those thank you cards and, oh, try again sometime, maybe, on this whole marriage thing if you can or wish?” Another thought entirely there, and a nonstarter.

And then there was Aunt Anne.

I needed a place, a spot, a wherever that wasn’t this whatever now, I needed, really, to just run away.

Cue Aunt Anne and Uncle Don and Florida sun and unintended but welcome beaches and Mouse dreams. Yes, I went to the beach and Yes, I worked for the Mouse, even wore tights and big ass floppy shoes and baggy shorts and plastic heads on the weekends.

I know, kinky huh? Just minus the soft light and candles and knotted rope.

She offered me a room, in a welcome home when I was at a loss as to what to do after my unexpected sideways step replete with those Thank You cards I never sent that I kept in a box on a new nightstand as a reminder of my lacking’s but also of my refusals (that was my justification anyway).

But Aunt Anne and Uncle Don and that huge living room where I would sit, cross-legged watching TV with them and commenting together on new shared favorite shows as a part of the family still sits cross-legged with me, along with remembrances of Benny the Cat who catted along with me to this new stead and who Aunt Anne, to her sure consternation, and unneeded pressure, kept an extra eye for “Hey that’s Stephen’s cat, keep an extra eye or i’ll never sleep and then be forced to hurt you … “

My cats have always had that effect.

We’re all, obviously, older now, shit catches up eventually as it will, as it does as it must but there are Aunt Anne’s and Uncle Don’s along the way who give you place, comfort, friendship, if you are lucky enough, a place to lay your head and regroup and even go to the beach or wear big ass plastic heads on the weekends (no, not in a kinky way … freakin’ wierdo’s) and breathe for just a moment.

Lubs Aunt Anne.

Whirly Whirl Anxious Days (poem)

November 8, 2025November 8, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry5 Comments

New Quadrille prompt this week at dVerse poets from Whimsygizmo, that dVerse 44 worder to include just one word.

The word this time around?

“Whirl”

Whimsy’s prompt is here

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Whirly Whirl Anxious Days

It hovers, floats

above

with

Birds

it fast circles a drowning

swirling

Pool

down

to the depths

realizing sea monsters

Gigs

a carousel’s spin

rides overwhelming

Wind

all in a blur

of a many

Whirl

curling fear’s toes

in anxiety’s

anxious days

Paper Pilot (poem)

November 5, 2025November 10, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry8 Comments

So for a Tuesday Poetics at dVerse Poets Lisa / Li talks of getting Crafty.

Dictionary.com gives these 3 options as definitions of craftsmanship:
the art or skill of a craftsperson.
the quality of being well-crafted or well-built.
the product or result of skilled labor or craft.

Another site gives craft three meanings:
an object made with skill
a vehicle for traveling on water or through air
an individual who makes objects in a skilled way.

Your challenge today is to use one or more of the definitions of craft or craftspersonship that have been given and write a poem in any format or length you choose.

So I thought, then, to crafting Paper Airplanes and just kind of flew along for a bit.

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Paper Pilot

It started with a blank stories sheet

that began all

folded in half

the top bent in never quite matching tri corners

then

to a point

made about flight

and escaping into the sky

of mind

if only to try

and think why

not

where Pilot would sit

in thoughts of finding a breeze

maybe reserved for the kites

from a sprinting giggling hillside

with pretty painted wind flushed chests

and colorful tails

but no strings to hold this flight

Pilot just hoping

it might alight, soar on its own

before a new crumpled ball

added

in a quiet crashing pile

underneath

them all

till …

A folded blank sheet

new

from a fresh ream of paper

another that started

all stories

of flights

maybe this one

with newly engineered tale,

one of its own,

something folded extra aero

dynamic

might do the trick

of flight

this time

Molting Verse (a rengay poem with David B)

November 1, 2025November 1, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry2 Comments

David, of The Skeptic’s Kaddish, reached out to me and asked if I would like to work a poetry Rengay with him.

Now this is something I hadn’t done before, a Rengay, a call and response sort of thing that has a base in Haiku. That’s here for definition.

But the fact that he thought of me for such?

Waaaaay cool.

And the time it took, over a couple of weeks? Cooler still as it just paced itself along with that time and with life thrown in for the extend.

So to a Rengay then and one of renewal …

Molting Verse

(sjf)
pinfeather words flitted
shed old skin to be more spry
to fly, tomorrow

(db)
curled deep in borrowed burrow
African rock python molts

(sjf)
and the earth itself
found lost hopes in the middle
ground thoughts in the sky

(db)
upon dawn
dreams barely linger —
me? half-known

(sjf)
half dreamt full dirt … then … then
but now new story out in the blue

(db)
soot-dark quill amends
fluttering fledgling fable—
shadow dries in breeze

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Molting Verse

pinfeather words flitted
shed old skin to be more spry
to fly, tomorrow

curled deep in borrowed burrow
African rock python molts

and the earth itself
found lost hopes in the middle
ground thoughts in the sky

upon dawn
dreams barely linger —
me? half-known

half dreamt full dirt … then … then
but now new story out in the blue

soot-dark quill amends
fluttering fledgling fable—
shadow dries in breeze

Cheers David

Raven’s Night (poem revisit for this Halloween Night)

October 31, 2025November 3, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry2 Comments

Well, time to close out a week or so then, a week or so’s worth of creepy-esque things of mine leading up to this Halloween Night.

I had already planned on finishing up the week with this one but, as a true Halloween night might call and cliche for, it is actually wildly windy out there in this Albany, NY area right now, with unrelenting cold drizzly bone seeping wet, evident all day foreboding an extra blustery, chillingly dark night and most apropos too as it was a similar night I wrote about here, in this one, for the Raven just before he came to made famous.

The post explains a bit more but. simply, to write a prequel to a literary character’s story …

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January 24, 2024

So, at a newly found for me “Poet’s Pub” of a site, dVersepoets.com, I came across a post that had a prompt to write what it refers to as a poetic Quadrille, a 44 word poem (not including the title) but in this prompt it said you need include the word “pinch” in any way you saw fit.

This I did and it is the most recent post in the Attic here, “Don’t Pinch Me”.

Well, came across another poem prompt yesterday that asked that you write a prequel for a character from literature.

Write a poem that is a prequel to a particular character from a nursery rhyme, Aesop’s fable, book , mythology etc.

And the responses that I have read thus far to this prompt are so imaginative and colorful and haunting that I can’t wait to finish them all.

But for me, after running through a few possibilities in my head, I thought to Edgar Allen Poe and the Raven and of the Raven himself.

Raven’s Night

I am not dead nor demon to be read or written of

I implore you open your door

or window

shutter’s curtains

flitting

with welcome inside out air

and any manner of candlelit care

with which to let me see your floor

please

to just walk that floor

or even alight a door

that I implore

again

you

to open

outside no place for me tonight

in weary last vestige of now blustery light

that casts shadows that scare me from flight

and I don’t scare

for I am Raven

confused of crow brethren

curse-ed cousins

but stronger than they even as they crow foot in murder of friends

what they needs simple

with simple’s ends

while I seek a just solitude and to depart nights

now

tired of taking flight in dark

reputation

just a me to be me but I am scared of he me

and what I no longer want see

in the dim

even eve’s with path clear in crisp moonlight

but worse on nights like

these

this

this one

this night at hand

and I see your light

window

harks

a place maybe to land

and

I will make amends for this slight into

your solitude

For I am Raven

I can build things from sticks and stones

peck and grab and stab and stack and foot place just right

or even

build things from thoughts and words alone

to assist you

in candlelight

I just don’t want to flight

in dark

any longer

and

not this night

in most simple order

I just need walk a floor

or alight a door

allow

please

me bring inside

at least

for

this just

one night

Ricky & I (short story – beginnings / revisit for Halloween week)

October 30, 2025November 3, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry3 Comments

And another, my second to last one, for this week and me revisiting some creepy or creepy adjacent things of mine on a daily for this Halloween week.

Back to April of last year.

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April 27, 2024

Ricky & I

We watched them warily, Ricky and I, and held back at a safe distance eventually going the other direction down the other side of the street so as to be even safer still as the older high school kids toilet papered and egged houses ahead of us as some sort of shit rolls downhill repayment for what we couldn’t possibly understand or imagine might be going on behind closed doors for them at home (I would learn years later, of some of them, in the news). We just knew that we had a short window now where we hadn’t quite aged out of our trick or treating, something evidenced in the fact that we were already starting to get lazy in our costuming, always just hobo’s now, something that wouldn’t get more creative again until my college years but on those nights the “candy” was usually cheap beer and girls, another thing that couldn’t possibly be understood or imagined or even cared about then, we just still had our sweet teeth and some lazily costumed possible final attempts, this year, maybe next, to satisfy them for free and we didn’t need any of these toilet papering egging assholes seeing us and ruining it.

Ricky and I had become pretty adept at avoiding these guys in our neighborhood after school and on the weekends, thankfully we didn’t have to figure out any extra avoidance techniques during the school day just yet – we still had this one more year before we shared the halls with them, well at least the ones who hadn’t graduated yet, though Ricky and I were afraid that the ones that were supposed to graduate out might be held back and still be around for our first year of High School, a would be hell if they had anything to do with it.

No, it was just after school and the weekends and oh, the school bus that we all rode together though at least that interminable time was relatively short as interminable goes (ok, that was kinda interminable all of the time, daily) but we could always depend on our driver, Missus D, to have our backs and put the fear of Missus D in them if need be, sitting up front and telling her that Moms said Hi with their latest batch of sugar cookies and never forgetting her at Christmas time with cards from each of us and small finely, meticulously wrapped in wax paper offerings were definitely to our advantage.

But on this Halloween night, though we did our best to measure wary fear with still being able to hit up the neighborhood candy houses, our usually successful avoidance attempts weren’t good enough. Seems Tommy Whitmore, who had also taken to calling himself “Jax” around that time, don’t know why, maybe he just needed another name that wasn’t the “Tommy!!!” he heard yelled, screamed, slapped, surrendered to at home, must have seen us behind he and his boy’s mean spirits under the Dowling’s porch light and came down and across the street to wait just outside the light’s reach, that hard circle line of light on one side and dark on the other right before their garage, and, with hands on his hips and a stupid grin, Tommy said,

“Hey boys, how ya doin’, and how ya doin’ in those candy bags of yours tonight?”

“We’re good Tommy, just leave us be, we’re not bothering you.”

“Hey, it’s “Jax”, but you ARE bothering me, bothering US” Tommy said with a hint of malice “just by being you, and you haven’t even offered me anything from your bags of goodies” as he did a grab while his boys hung just outside that light’s ring in the Dowling’s driveway giggling vacantly and even more stupidly than Tommy’s dumb ass grin.

“Hey, those are ours!!’ Ricky yelled, straight backed but for only an instant.

“Oh, he speaks, on his own, the redhaired one” as Ricky’s spine shrunk. “No, these are ours now and we’re also going to take you two on a ride.”

“No Tommy …” and a glare with a raised hand’s intent “No … Jax … we have to get home, we’re not getting in any cars with you. We were done anyway, take our bags and just leave us be.”

“Well that just ain’t gonna happen you two …”

Then came a rush of wind sweeping past and around our heads … something usually reserved for family stories at backyard get togethers or at funerals when Ricky’s extended family would arrive, and the strangest of strange things would happen, in a surreal happiness, it was fast, a blur, made the ground shake just enough to unsettle your feet, make you feel a little askew. We knew what, who this was, Me and Ricky, but Tommy and his boys didn’t.

I told you that Ricky and I had become pretty adept at avoiding these guys and we had, but it was more, sometimes a not just protecting ourselves, but protecting them.

“No Tommy …”

“It’s Jax!”

“No Jax, not tonight”

“You gonna defy me, you useless pieces of shit, no that ain’t happenin’. Right boys?”

But the ground shook some more, the air trembled again, whooshed past and around us again, as air shouldn’t tremble like that and I stood my now shaky ground.

“Not now”

“And it’s Jax!!!” he yelled

“I wasn’t talking to you Tommy”

I said to Ricky “Not now” but his shrunk spine grew, not a one of simple stand up defiance, but just grew.

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I met Ricky through Mom get togethers in new neighborhood get togethers. Let’s introduce ourselves with kids to break the ice but really kids being just an excuse for Moms to drink wine on an early Saturday. I had seen Ricky on the ballfield in my new digs, after having moved from Baltimore to now Pittsburgh, he was a monster. His throws from his shortstop spot practically took the first baseman’s glove off and we weren’t even in high school yet.

“Do you play?” he asked me.

“I pitch”

“We could use one of those on our team. You any good?”

And that was it, I confounded him with my off the table curve that I shouldn’t have been throwing at that age and he tried to take the glove off of anyone who had the misfortune of playing first base. Instant friends.

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Friendships can be curious things. They might start with Moms using you as pawns for a glass of wine, or two, on a Saturday afternoon, they can be responses to what you don’t know yet of the evils of the world behind closed doors and you group, join forces, even if it’s only in a force of two or they can be things that were just supposed to happen, like Ricky with a rifle of an arm that make first basemen regret they play the game and you note, Ricky. He and I became a pair of buds linked through and through until, well, we just weren’t.

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“Not now”

“What not now you little prick?!”

“Ricky is my friend”

“And?”

“You don’t want to do this, he’s not liking you right now”

“What? Little redhead here?”

“Please just let it go Tommy”

“It’s Jax!!” (and there was that raised hand again)

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The other curious thing about friendships is that there are those that are just cursory things, friendships you recall for just being a “friendship”, where you might call each other, out of the blue, to check in years later, heard you had a kid, how is the better half, what’s her name again but then there was Ricky and his secrets, his family’s secrets, our secrets then.

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His spine grew instead of a backing away shrink, unnaturally so, to four times his height and his red hair fired until it rivaled the sun right on that hard line of light and dark in the Dowling’s driveway and he shone, glowed and towered Tommy and his voice changed making any Tommy attempt at inspiring fear seem weak and puny “YOU WILL NOT MESS WITH MY FRIEND!” followed by a simple backhand slap.

And that was it, Tommy, not Jax, that new name nonsense ended that night I figured (though all these years later I hope not, that was his one, lone attempt at a “me” thing in his so lonely, pained world – Hey Jax, heard you had some kids, how is that better half of yours I don’t know, I’m sure she is beautiful, how have you all fared?) slunk away from out of the dust bins across the street and amid the scattering of idiots he called pals.

“You’re done aren’t you Ricky?

“Yeah, gotta go now”

“Dammit Ricky, I have no one else and I don’t even want anyone else as my friend.”

“I know, me neither, but I gotta go”

“I know”

And then, there was that rush of wind again, picking up leaves and dust and moving earth and all it’s leavings around in a small twister.

“Hey Missus D, thought that might be you”

“You good?”

“Yeah, I’m ok I guess, thank you for keeping an eye but …”

“Don’t worry, you’ll see him again, Ricky’s got a good heart, you know that, but he and my sister need to find another place now, to be safe, try and start again, heard in the wind that there might be a good spot in the mountains near the coast, some small towns of like kind, until Ricky learns how to control things. Plus, you’ll see him again ‘cause he always hated that he couldn’t hit your curveball, he’ll be practicing … Sugar cookies tomorrow?”

“Maybe the next day Missus D, gotta give Mom the head’s up”

“Ok, and maybe an offering wrapped finely in wax paper? At Christmas?”

“Of course, as always”

The Scrapbook And The Man In The Black Fedora (Flash Fiction revisit for this Halloween Week)

October 29, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry4 Comments

And continuing with revisiting a poem or a story every day this week that fit a creepy theme as we approach Halloween. This one from a Flash Fiction prompt, August of last year.

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August 12, 2024

It’s Monday and, at the dVerse Poets Pub, we are writing Prosery, the very short piece of prose or flash fiction . It can be in any genre of your choice, but it does have a limit of 144 words; an additional challenge is to hit 144 exactly. The special thing about Prosery is that we give you a complete line or two from a poem, which must be included somewhere in your story, within the 144-word limit.

The complete line or two in this case are from Leonard Cohen and his poem “Take this Waltz” with the lines being …

And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss

The Scrapbook And The Man In The Black Fedora

“Hey Jaimie, check this out, just found this covered in moss behind a tree”

Presents a tattered book with dead flowers pinned to it and a warning “DO NOT OPEN”

“Well, let’s see what’s in it”

“It says not to open Billy”

“C’mon, probably just a note left by the 11 year old girl who lost it. It looks like a scrapbook”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right”

Billy opening the scrapbook finds it filled with photo’s of people and notations of the date/time of their deaths and scribbled inside the cover …

And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss

At that moment a man in a black fedora appeared.

The air stilled.

Then Billy was gone and all Jaimie caught as the fedora’d man closed the scrapbook was a quick glimpse of Billy’s picture.

The Wind and the “Epistle” (revisit a Six Sentence Story for this Halloween Week)

October 28, 2025November 1, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry2 Comments

And another revisit of something for the season this last week of Halloween.

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February 21, 2025

Earlier in the week I came across someone new to me through Sadje, a friend at dVerse Poets.

She is GirlieOnTheEdge and offers prompts for Six Sentence Stories, an idea I liked, like some of the 144 word Flash Fiction prompts you can find at dVerse, though with six sentences allowed that gives me a bit more room. I also knew I liked Girlie from the get go as this particular prompt mentioned “The Alarm” as part of her inspiration, an old fave band reminded from my undergrad and then graduate school days (in the current season and for other reasons I suddenly longed for “Rain in the Summertime”).

The Prompt?

February 16, 2025 GirlieOnTheEdge

PROMPT WORD: WIND

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The Wind and the “Epistle”

Coming up from below deck after a lengthy search, top to bottom, of what appeared an abandoned fourth-rate named “Epistle”, Martins declared across bows to his Captain that she was indeed abandoned though he marveled that he had never seen anything quite like this ornate fitted construction, with nary a nail, nor some of the letters he had found in the captain’s empty quarters.

Captain Richard, with a curious though determined look, turned and directed the crew of “The Resolution” to board and see what could possibly be salvaged, if anything, just as Martins heard a voice from behind him saying “but I am here” though, on a turn’s look inspection, he saw not a soul.

Just then a sudden unexpected and fierce wind picked up and roiled what had, only moments before, been serene, placid seas below blue white speckled skies but those skies came to a sudden dark clouded anger, the sails filled flush, puffed out like the deep breath chest of an unnaturally sized, large winged vengeful bird to rival those of ancient sea beasts beneath the waves that seemed to stir with this wind’s dark cries of anguish and fear telling of stories warned.

Lightning crashed and stung about the tops of the sail masts, torrential rains drowned cries and pleadings of God, water beast tails as large as their own ship’s sails rose from above the waves only to dive out of fear, the heavens blackened loud and bellowed louder.

Captain Richard lost footing on deck, fearing his grip, slipping confused and disoriented, as did his crew, but, regaining his balance for a moment he turned to warn Martins to return only to find that he and the “Epistle” were no longer there and that the seas and skies, only seconds earlier filled with a storm’s rage, such as he had never witnessed in all his years at sea, came to a sudden calm again almost as if they hadn’t been changed at all, as if they hadn’t ever been anything other than what they were before in their calm, with skies returned to the blue of white floating speckles, as if in a languid painting, the sea flat again, but Richard swore, to his end of days spent in the throes of madness, that he saw the waters of the ocean drop off the edge of the world in the distance, off of a flat earth, and the Epistle be carried off into the heavens inside the belly of a great glowing flying sea beast and just as he heard Martins, faintly, in the wind implore “but I am here”.

Standing in uneasy stunned silence Richard took measure … before then realizing that they should turn back, quickly, pointing “The Resolution” towards home but also before the knowing of the court martial and subsequent murder trial he would face of a missing crewman, Ross Ignatius P Martins, upon his return.

Exit 21B (another poem revisit for the Halloween season)

October 27, 2025November 3, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry4 Comments

Thought I’d spend this final week of the Halloween season revisiting some things of mine that seem to fit the mood.

When I first moved here to Schenectady, New York, a year ago August, moved in with my Sis and Nephews and some bonus cats, I was still doing a commute a couple of days a week down to the office in Beacon from up here until I could get to the point of being good with doing all my Beacon work remotely from Latham (2 plus hours on that drive by the way, so eventually getting to NOT needing to physically be in the Beacon office was huge and couldn’t come fast enough).

But there was this spot that I passed in my to an fro’s on this ride, along the NY State Thruway, what was once, surely, a vibrant, busy truck stop. It sat/sits vacant, boarded, graffitied, among all the other alive places I passed where you could grab some gas, a bit of shut-eye or maybe a bite to eat like you could here, just at another time.

A dead spot.

(August 17, 2024)

Exit 21B

It was raining dogs and devils

a night as thick as pitch

and thieves

of the day

but there was light …

Exit 21B

a promise of respite from the drive

that took so long to not quite survive

just yet

our destination

it shone, shimmered, sparkled,

harkened

Exit 21B

brighting our way

with promise

“Oh, that’s a place we could stay”

on this dark and stormy cliché

Truckers drank coffees

of known measure

two lumps or cream or straight

at a counter

ogling Mary’s offer’s weight

to refill a cup before return

to their trucks

dreaming in back bed sleep cabs

of another mug

We shook off the rain

just a wet stain

at our feet

in stilling puddles

“Do you have a room,

to escape soon now this horrid swoon

of weather?”

“Of course, just sign here Sir, Madame”

There were tables of chance

to win without even a glance

it was

easy

night was day

peasy

There were family and friends left to the wayside

justified

besides who are they

really

anyway?

We sang in bright neon lights

our day’s night might

wonder how we could have been so lucky to have lost our way

on a night dark as stark

stark as dark

to find this haven

Exit 21B

When we woke we stood to shake off the yoke

of another day’s night’s side step

then just to skip stop to our next

next stop

to the coast

but Exit 21B made us stay

We are here today

boarded up behind nailed wood windows

doors

long dead highway signs

long dead neon

long dead Mary

to fill a cup

a mug

of coffees

for trucker dreams

the coast always so far away

it seems

now

at Exit 21B

Third Eye Harvest Moon (poem revisit for the season)

October 26, 2025November 3, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry8 Comments

Another re-post of something for this creepy season.

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October 2, 2024

In response to Merril’s “Haunted Harvest” prompt at dVerse poets.

“You can take the themes of harvest or haunted literally or use them metaphorically in any way you wish. Harvest grain, organs, fish, or emotions; imagine the grim reaper with a scythe. Write about something that haunts you, regret, a long-ago love, thoughts of someone who has died, or actual ghosts. Explore a haunted harvest”.