Your prompt word this week is
BREAK
You can look at this prompt in a positive light – a break away someway nice, taking a break at work/school or breaking a previous record. But, of course, it also has negative connotations such as to interrupt someone or something. It can be painful too – to break a bone, a glass, or someone’s heart, for example. And then there’s to break the law… What does this week’s prompt word mean to you?
Fact or fiction, prose or poetry, I would love to read your thoughts on this week’s prompt, but there’s no obligation to share your writing. Here is the work you shared on the last prompt MAGIC.
A little something in which I would like to believe,
Despite being the fine art of how to deceive;
Is Magic nothing more than a contrived illusion?
I’d prefer to embrace the illogical conclusion.
There is Magic in human attraction –
How it ignites such a powerful yet natural reaction
That overwhelms and enslaves the body and mind
To search for something illusive you may never find.
Still, I believe that the moment her eyes met mine,
We found that Magic is something that is Truly Divine
I have often said that there are only two reasons that men write poetry – two get paid or to get something that rhymes with “paid.” When I wrote this twenty-eight years ago, it was for the latter reason. However, after finishing it, I realized that I had written something that (I thought) was a really good poem, I let it rest for half a day. When I came back for another read, I decided that it was too good to be used for that purpose – that it was a real poetic expression of heart and mind and that it could send an unintended message. But it is the best poem I have ever written as it is an expression of feelings about Love, God’s Greatest Gift and how I could be affected by it.
After dipping the cube of cheddar into the mixture of curry and chocolate Darlene’s eyes opened wide. Her taste buds were digesting the unique combination that reminded her of a Mexican mole sauce. Sweetness was intertwined with heat creating magic when crossing over her tastebuds.
“This is pure heaven,” she exclaimed when I was walking past her table. I acknowledged the compliment and showing her a little gratitude I sent her a cup of my favorite in house coffee. Darlene was very grateful and showed it in the tip she left behind when leaving.
I had stepped outside to enjoy a cigarette after the lunch rush had ended and while leaning against the side of the building I heard Darlene’s friend talking to her as they walked past not seeing me. “That idiot cook had no clue that his sauce was completely indigestible”. Her friend smiled and said that the palter compliment was a great move so as not to offend anyone in the restaurant. Darlene remined quiet.
Magic isn’t always loud.
It doesn’t need thunder
or sparks
or hands raised to the sky.
Sometimes
it is a quiet knowing —
a feeling that settles
before the mind understands.
It lives
in glances that linger,
in words that arrive
at exactly the right moment,
in songs that find you
when you didn’t know
you needed them.
Magic is the invisible thread
pulling moments together
like constellations
we only see
when we finally look up.
It is love that doesn’t end,
just changes form.
A whisper in the dark.
A warmth in the chest.
A presence
that never truly leaves.
And if you’ve felt it —
even once —
you already know
magic is real.
Love Feels Like Magic, But It Takes Work To Last
I was beguiled by his smile.
What a miraculous find.
Strolling along life’s promenade,
Thankfully, I am his, and he is mine.
But real love isn’t magic!
You have to work every day
To keep the joy and peace alive
By the things you do and don’t say.
Offer a cup of gentleness,
Give much love, double or cubed.
Don’t just curry favor for your good.
Be real, until their heart is moved.
Some believe love will magically last.
So, they leave everything to chance.
But some things have to be nourished,
And that is especially true of romance.
Magic Spell
Journey back in time with me
A quiet time, oh, can’t you see?
No internet, no political lies,
No news that constantly horrifies
Travel paths we trod when young
Friends, games, having fun
Make believe all is well
Wave your wand – a magic spell
“It’s magic.”
“What?”
“The way you made that glass of water disappear.”
“I drank it.”
“Glass and all?”
“Yeah, that part was magic.”
Susan Batten:
Do you believe in serendipity? It’s a chance event or development which proves beneficial. We writers should, in my opinion, look out for it in our daily lives because, by joining up the dots, we have a letter or an article.
This time, while I was wondering what I could say about “magic”, the theme for this week, I opened a mail from Birds & Blooms, a magazine which has somehow wheedled its way into my inbox. Not that I have anything against either birds or blooms, they add to the day – but I don’t remember inviting this one in.
And what did I see? A grand headline, “Monarch Butterfly Migration is Simply Magical”.
I’m still not sure whether it was the strange coincidence (an article just when I needed one), the incredible photography or the lucid explanation into the whys and wherefores – which part of the story was “magic” but I’m left, as usual, impressed and humbled by what goes on in the natural world.
Beyond the Magic Stuff
A magic trick is not enough.
Reality’s too real and rough.
I need much more than magic stuff
to lead me where Love dwells.
magic is not luck
and miracle is free
does not cost a buck
Magical
Make believe a world of wonder
A place where anything is possible
Guaranteed to be full of charm
Imagine the spells and incantations
Created in this magical place
Fascination
Truly it would be magic
If…
I were taller,
Wore high heels,
Could pull off an over the shoulder dress,
Didn’t get washed out by yellow,
Had pierced ears,
Manicured finger and toe nails or
Bother with makeup…
Truly it is magic
That…
I am just my height,
Prefer flats,
Enjoy my flannel and T-shirts,
Pull off blue denim jeans with ease
Like to listen and observe
Have a small dimple in my chin,
And enjoy simple things…
I wish I was magic
A wand, please
I’ll wave it right over
End strife with ease
I need the magic
To end this tragic
Nonsensical warring
“King’s” ego is starring
His moves are onkus
With sycophant congress
I need the magic
I need the wand
To get rid of the blonds
With “presidential” bonds
I wish I was magic.
Don’t Mock the Magic
“It’s just a dirty stick.” his mother said.
Still Tommy held it tight
Then later took it into bed
To protect him through the night.
Awakened by a sudden squeal,
He grabbed for his “magic stick”.
That’s when it turned into a sword of steel.
His heart still beating REAL quick!
He listened a long while becoming calm,
Now, well-armed for monster warfare.
He’d make it to morning and brag to his mom
How ‘her boy’ was safely still there.
She may cry but he’ll just raise his wand.
The one she had dared to mock.
And THIS TIME she’d be likely more fond
Of his soon-to-be-found “wishing rock”!
So many times I’ve wished I could have a magic wand and the power to make everything nasty go away.
I hate to see people unhappy, worried, or unwell. Why do horrible things happen to nice people?
Magic is not just an illusion for entertainment as depicted by Houdini, Paul Daniels, David Copperfield, David Nixon and David Blaine to name but a few.
Magic is around all of us, we just don’t recognise it.
It’s there in a child’s smile, the wonder at Nature, an elderly person recovering from illness, a soldier coming home to his family, a new baby, someone who has the gift of music or art.
Magic is endless, and different for us all.
*Warning: megacheesiness ahead*
You Cast a Spell
I didn’t believe in magic
Until I fell under your spell
Until you left me mesmerized
And hypnotized as well
I never thought that fate was true
Or destiny a thing
Until you walked into my life
And played your song on my heart strings
I didn’t believe in soulmates
Or that things were meant to be
But here we are still standing
And my life feels more complete
I don’t want to be too cheesy
Though perhaps I’m too far gone
We both are far from perfect
But our connection makes us strong.
we’ve lost it—
those quiet, glowing moments,
when sparks flew like wild constellations
and butterflies lived in our chests,
when even the stars and moon
felt close enough to touch.
we’ve lost it.
did i loosen my grip,
or did you slip away first?
was i not enough—
or were you never meant to stay?
did we try to hold on,
or did we simply surrender
too soon,
too quickly,
without a fight?
maybe yes.
maybe no.
we’ve lost it—
the magic.
or maybe…
it was never meant to last,
because to you,
i was never home—
just something fleeting,
something dazzling,
something you could call
magic
until it faded.
Lou by the Sea:
Ending
There’s no magic
to this thing
that some call
‘Us’
There’s no sparks
No flash
No fire
No spectacle
Not even a magic wand
Just blood sweat and tears
The blood from when we
Fought
The sweat from
My constant
Endless
Toil
The tears from…
Well…
You know about that now.
Gnome-sweet-gnome
‘We love it, Mum – don’t we Mark?’
‘Hm. It’ll go with the gnome.’
He hadn’t yet managed to break the garden gnome his mother had given them for Christmas. This time it was one of those twee little doors that’s meant to look as if an elf or sapient hedgehog lived behind it.
‘It’s pottery, for your ninth anniversary. I didn’t think you’d want something gathering dust on the mantlepiece.’
Was that a hint?
‘Lets go and find a spot for it in your rockery.’
‘Another tacky garden ornament,’ grumbled Mark next morning as she unlocked the back door to let out the cat.
She gasped.
He joined her. ‘What’s up?’
A key protruded from the open door at the bottom of the rockery.
Tony:
In memory of a poet whom I love a lot : Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
Fragile Promise
In the night when everything trembles, the world unfolds like a luminous wound.
A word breathes between the ruins of the heart, Magic !
He promises nothing, he transfigures.
He burns without consuming, he consoles without lying.
And the soul, suddenly, stops running away, it learns to see…
March Magic
Minus temps crawl to the plus side
and caterpillars become butterflies.
Tulip bulbs blossom from top soil hats,
snowflakes; water’s cold fairy dust,
morph into spring rains — March magic.
Magic in New Orleans – A Travel Overview
We just came home from a trip to New Orleans, which is truly a magical city. New Orleans is not very far from Dallas, where we live, and we’ve been to New Orleans several times. However, it was a fun family trip with a theme. The theme we chose for our trip was Magic, including Vampires, Voodoo/Hoodoo, ghosts, pirates and St. Patrick’s Day. We also went on a ghost tour. Below are some photos from the Voodoo Museum, and miscellaneous voodoo, witches, vampire and pirate stores.
We also ate at a restaurant that has a ghost. The Muriel’s Jackson Square restaurant is allegedly haunted by a ghost that sits in the chair. The ghost is a former owner by name of Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan.
To see the fantastic picture and to read more, click here.
Magic Man
She was grinning like a Cheshire Cat Feeling gorgeous and wicked and wishing that It would never end…
This was madness, much too decadent
Lived only for the next interlude
Her feelings, so eloquent
It was bound to end…
Flames that burn too brightly are not easy to sustain
The Magic Man was losing interest
and she was in such pain
It was going to end…
She tried some last-ditch desperation ploys
This only served to make things worse
And now, there would be no more joys
This was the end!
Ladyleemanila:
There´s magic in this remote place
Fresh smell of the trees
Misty forest and full of grace
In the morning such breeze
Slippery when wet, be careful
Minor hurdle, don´t be fearful
Slippery
Slippery
This is nature, let´s be cheerful
There´s magic in this remote place
Hear the strum of the wind
A quiet place and not a race
Some string of woodwind
Follow our heart and meditate
Life is good, our future awaits
Follow our heart
Follow our heart
Things we need are all adequate
There´s magic in this remote place
Though leaves might be dusty
My favourite place, my space
Though sometimes it´s gusty
Light a candle, oh so peaceful
Let´s make our life so meaningful
Light a candle
Light a candle
For all the blessings, be thankful
Starry Blue Magic
And the blue whispered softly
into the sunray’s ear,
inviting her for an idle stroll
all along spring’s alleys
so full of splendor…
Of stars’ shine and charm,
mornings’ glimmer divine
afternoons warm and cozy
evenings like Sun and Moon’s shrine,
For March is always
a sacred crib and cradle
by magical design…
Many moons ago, when I was a teenager, I was shut in a box, and sawn into, not two, but three pieces; but please don’t ask me to show you my scars…
My uncle ( by marriage),was among many other things, a magician, and I have to say a rather amateurish one. Going by the state name of Ronaldo, he mainly performed at old folks’ homes, as they were called back then.
While he wasn’t practising his magic, he would do whatever work he could find, including being a clown and Father Christmas. He would travel around the country looking for work, uprooting the family to join him.
On one occasion, all the family photos were lost, as he couldn’t pay the removal men and they kept everything; sadly I have no photos of my mother before her wedding day.
Another time, my auntie came home from work to find he had sold her beloved piano.
I could write a book about Uncle Bill, but back to the magic..
Me being put in a box and sawn into three pieces was the finale of his act.
The ironic thing is I couldn’t do it now as I am claustrophobic. I definitely wasn’t back then, and no, that wasn’t what made me either; I vividly remember my first attack, it was a few years later, and it wasn’t in a box!
I expect you’re dying to know how the trick was performed. I would tell you, but I’d have to kill you afterwards…
Flowers for Twila
Three days after he was discharged from Fort Hood, Skully rolled into Des Moines with an Ameripass, sixty bucks, and a powerful thirst. Fresh off the streets of Fallujah and still living out of his duffel, the only thing Skully estimated he was lacking was a destination.
Unlike most of his army buddies, Skully had no family to come home to and saw no reason to go back to Jacksonville- all he had ever done there was get in trouble- so he hopped on a Greyhound in Killeen and rode it straight through to Des Moines.
And as luck would have it, that’s where he found the Cottonwood Diner.
Or rather- that was when he found Twila.
She was maybe twenty-six, with dark hair tied up in a messy bun with a ballpoint pen sticking out of it. She brought him coffee without him asking, and when she dropped off his plate, she said, “You look like a man who needs something to do with his hands.”
She pointed him toward a guy named Hendricks who ran a salvage yard on Route 9, and that’s how Skully got his first post-Iraq job. Pulling parts.
He ate at the Cottonwood every morning, and lunch too on the days he didn’t have to work. The food was decent, but it was Twila that kept him coming back.
She listened to him. That was the thing. He wasn’t much of a talker then- he’s still not- but she would sit across from him in a booth after her shift and ask a question and then actually wait for the answer. Not filling the silence. Just waiting. Most people can’t do that. Most people are already building their next sentence before you’ve finished your first. Twila just allowed the silence to happen.
They were together two years and some change. He thought they’d be together forever.
He was wrong about that.
The end wasn’t ugly. It was almost worse. She sat him down in that same booth and said she cared about him deeply, but that she wasn’t in the same place he was. That she didn’t know if she ever would be. She said it with the same knowing look she’d given him that first morning.
So Skully hopped back on a bus headed east. After that, there were a lot of roads.
Skully worked wherever work was. He lived lean. Kept a bedroll and a duffel and not much else. He wasn’t running from anything- he was just a man the road had claimed. The road asked nothing of him and gave nothing back, and somehow that suited him fine.
He thought about Twila the way you think about a place you once felt safe. Not every day. Not even every week. But always with the fondness that is reserved for the one great love of your life.
He was fifty-three years old when he found the newspaper.
He’d been working a roofing job in Henryetta, staying in a motel that charged by the week, when he came across it- left on the plastic chair outside his room by someone who didn’t want it anymore.
Skully almost didn’t open it. He wasn’t much for news. But it was a Sunday and he had nothing better to do, so he poured a cup of coffee from the machine on the bathroom counter and reclined on the swayback motel bed.
His eyes fell upon the obituaries the way you always find things you aren’t looking for.
Twila Faye Garrett (née Guthrie), 54, of Henryetta, passed peacefully at home on the morning of September 6th, surrounded by family. Beloved wife of Jay Garrett. Cherished mother of Delia, 22, and Connor, 19, and a community of friends who knew her warmth.
He read it four times.
It wasn’t hard to find the cemetery. Henryetta was not a big town. He stood at the edge of the plot for a while before he walked up to the stone. He didn’t have any words. He hadn’t expected to. But he knew if anybody ever understood his silence- it was Twila.
The next morning, he stopped at a grocery store and picked up a bouquet of cut flowers- carnations, a few sunflowers- and took them to her grave. He did it the next day. And the day after that.
One morning, there was a man already there, staring at Skully with an expression that was hard to read.
“So you’re the one who’s been leaving the flowers,” the man said.
Skully nodded, looking back at the stone. They stood like that for a while.
Finally the man said, “I’m Jay.”
“I figured,” said Skully. “I’m Skully. I knew her- a long time ago.”
Jay looked at him then, and whatever he saw, he seemed to make peace with it quietly.
“She spoke of you often.”
Skully set his carnations down and put his hands in his pockets.
“She used to do this thing,” he said, “when she was listening to you. She’d go completely still. And like magic- the whole world just stopped- and there was nobody in it but you. You ever notice that?”
“Yeah,” Jay answered in a low whisper. “I noticed.”
The two men stood together in the silence that followed, each holding onto what they had left of the only woman both of them had ever loved.
The Magical Moon
Fascination with the moon is endemic with all poets and word weavers, me included. The magic of the moon irresistibly casts its spell as the night takes over the firmament. In spite of being 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) away from the Earth, the moon’s bewitching magic remains constant, if not ever increasing. It is said that the moon is inching away from the earth by 4 cm a year. Yet the poets gravitate towards it like bees to blossoms.
When we were kids, grandmother used to tell us the story of that old lady who has been sitting on the moon for epochs and sewing endlessly on her rickety spinning wheel. You see that faint black smear on its gleaming face. Scientists say it’s the shadow of the craters but the story tellers say that it’s a blot on her beatific countenance. It’s an old saying “even the moon has a blemish on its face”.
I guess it’s her blemished beauty that beguiles more. The imperfection makes her the perfect muse for romantic imagination. She is the confidante of broken hearts. She listens intently to the rants of unrequited love. She has tears but she hides them behind a glowing visage. And for the deprived it’s the symbol of that piece of round bread or roti that an empty stomach salivates for.
In celebration of this fatal attraction here’s a bunch of moon haiku highlighting how the ubiquitous moon is ever present in thoughts and cadence, rhymes and rhythms, verses and musings :
weekend
I carry the moon
back home
***
moon-less night
did I step on
my shadow?
***
still an inch to go
I leave the moon
to her choice
lunar eclipse
***
half moon
night tells me
the other side of the story
***
evening walk
I ask the moon
how many days more
to come full circle
***
drizzle
on the windscreen
the moon plays
hide and seek
A Little Bit of Everything, With Love
I look in your eyes
and the smile you freely give
love radiating
your essence touches mine and
I know you feel it – magic
***
Image quote: Pinterest
Esther Chilton 
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