The Siege

The mother laid her son to rest,
As she did every night.
Perhaps so far the toughest test
In her tortuous plight.

The bombs they fell with shrieking fire,
Amongst her dearest friends.
A situation ever dire,
Without an easy end.

Tonight was different, she knew;
Her soul began to crack.
His lips had turned a frozen blue,
He wasn’t coming back.
The fight for them was good and true,
Now husband, sons she lacked.

Summer Offensive

The rains came, the soldiers deployed,
Forward they went, devoid
Of any emotion, just employed
To see their foe destroyed.

Sneaking in through the smallest of holes,
Each among them knew his or her role,
Narrow passages awaited them, their goal
To find the center of control.

But alas, before they had begun,
Their foes brought out their heavy guns.
First came the floods, filling the tunnels,
Stopped their flight, gone their chance to run.

Then came the bombs, sharp bursts amid the calm.
The sounds deafening, the force alarming.

And then, to end it all came the chemicals.
The final end, the reaper’s sickle.
Troops lay dead and dying, all for the fickle

And pointless Summer pollen offensive

.

One Wish

One Wish

If you had it,
That one little wish,
what would you ask?

A Manifesto For A Better World,

Perhaps.

Or something more…

Selfish.

War,

Hunger,

Cancer,

Ended.

Or not.

Heartless not to want these, no doubt.

But if I had it,

That one little wish,

Well.

I fear that the world

Would continue to wait.

To wait for an unspoken wish.

Six Word Stories 20

Her murder solved his biggest problem.

Six Word Stories 19

Her continued physical presence tormented him.

Confessions of a Failed Novelist.

This is the last piece of writing ever found by Alexander H. Cochran, a self-described failed novelist. His work was never published. 

My folks died when I could barely call myself a man. Fresh out of college and ready to face the world I was, when that truck hit ’em on the highway back from my grandfather’s funeral. They never had a chance. There was a lot of death in the air that day, I guess.

My daddy made his money in oil when I was a young ‘un, so I never had to worry about nothing from that day forward. Looking back, I like to think that was the first mark against me, as a writer. I never had to do it, never needed it to provide my next meal, would never not be alive the next day if I didn’t sell a story. I never needed writing to survive, at least not physically. But hell, maybe that’s just me making excuses in my old age.

Not that I hadn’t always wanted to be a writer, far from it. When I was going through my adolescence I could barely believe people got paid anything to write, let alone could make a hell of a living off of it if they were any good. Words had always had a strange old draw for me, they provided a kind of haven for my imagination, somewhere that worlds could be created and personalities fleshed out that were far more interesting than anyone I’d been unfortunate enough to meet in the real world, where they teach ya that a firm handshake is more important than a good story. Bullshit.

And it wasn’t that I was no good, or that I didn’t try neither. I wrote some stuff that I was kinda proud of too, but it never saw the light of day. My words were fine for me, but I couldn’t imagine how anyone else would be interested in any of the things I had to say. A curse of being even a moderately good writer is to be forced to be a great reader, and to be a great reader is to be aware of just how damn good so many others are at this writing business.

How, then, knowing the work of Papa Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of Verne and Faulkner and Whitman, how am I supposed to let my thoughts out into the world and try and compete with them? Anything I could think of in a year any of them could do on a bad morning. Hell, Hemingway wrote drunk better than I ever have sober.

I tried that too, tried every trick in the book to try and get something, anything that I wasn’t sick of the sight of by the time I finished writing it. I drank bottles and bottles and bottles of scotch, and it never did nothing for me. It didn’t make me no Hemingway, just made me tired and sick and cranky.

I tried to travel myself interesting, but that didn’t work, the cultures jumbled and produced a mess, so that nothing I wrote seemed honest or believable. I even locked myself in a damn cabin out by the lakes with nothing but a typewriter, a box of cigars and some matches, but I ended up using the matches to burn the mediocrity that I’d written and hightailing it back to the city with nothing.

You might wonder why I’m writing this now. I’ve asked myself that question too. Well, I know the answer, I’m going to die soon, my heart’s finally given up on me it seems. I guess I wanted to write something honest before I went, ’cause I think that might have been the problem all along. I worked so hard to create worlds, and emulate my heroes, that I never put an honest word down on paper. Not once, in my 45 years of trying to write, did I ever write anything that I would want to represent me, that I would want my name attached to once I’m gone. That’s why I never sold anything. Oh, I had the offers, would have made a tidy sum too. But like I said, I was never in it for the money. I’d’ve only sold if I knew it was going to go down real well in posterity, not some market pleasing fiction that anyone can churn out if they turn their mind to it.

I wanted to be a novelist remembered as a great, but in chasing that dream, and stubbornly sticking to it, I failed to be a novelist at all, and in ten years it may be that nobody even remembers my name. In trying to change the world, I overreached, and couldn’t even change my own. But that ain’t to say I ain’t proud to have tried. Better to shoot for the stars and dance with the moon than content yourself with changing to please the masses. Never forget that.

Sincerely,

Alexander H. Cochran
A Self-Confessed Failure

 

Mercy

The sun glinted her final rays over the hills as she fled west. As she made her escape, her fingers clung promiscuously to the green meadows, knowing she was destined to slip away once more, as she did every evening. As the nightly abyss engulfed the landscape, the moon began to rise, bringing with it the tide that surrounded the small island every day, cutting it off from civilisation.

On the island stood a large abby, built two hundred years ago by those who once ruled here, and it was flanked by a small, enclosed town that provided sustenance for the monks there, and a few other amenities that had grown out of its proximity to the sea.

Every day without fail, the tide came in and isolated the small populace, making travel to and from the place next to impossible, with the result that the townsfolk had to resort to a rather bizarre schedule if they wanted to leave the town, often waking during the middle of the night to go out in search of the larger markets inland, before returning in the bright daylight to the relative comfort of their beds.

It was not often that the moon was obliging enough to bring the tides in at night, but it was not just the everyday folk who delighted when it did. Beyond those who rejoiced at a properly scheduled sleep, there were those with more sinister reasons for willing the alignment of moon and water.

In an ageing townhouse in the middle of the city, the killer sharpened his knife. Nowadays, we would call him a serial killer, but they didn’t have such an expansive vocabulary back then, nor as much competency solving crimes. People died horribly, and often, and even those who weren’t dead disappeared frequently, wandering off to begin life anew. The rare combination of the tide and the dark night provided him with just the opportunity for which he had been waiting, a time when his target had no hope of escape, even if they did see their end before it came.

There was no science to it, but he was always identified his victim ahead of time, knowing that ultimately the time would come when he could strike. He selected the elderly, the infirm, the drifters and those who begged for alms, for mercy to be laid upon them by this religious town. He was doing God’s work, he thought, sending those in need to a better place, ending their suffering before it became unbearable.

Finally satisfied with the cut of his blade, he pulled up the hood on his habit and melted out into the night.

An Announcement: To those who have yet to lose interest in me

As anyone kind enough to follow this blog on a semi-regular basis might have realised, I have not been incredibly active of late. This has been down to a number of factors, but mainly due to my work as Senior Editor for a new website that has recently launched, which has been taking up most of the space in my head.

As such I have very much neglected my creative duties here on this blog, failing to judge contents I started, and not writing for months on end, for which I can only apologise.

However, having now achieved more of a balance in what I am doing, I am attempting to make a foray into the more creative world once again. I won’t be doing any contests for now, due to not wanting to take on more judging time than I can hope to give back to read all the superb entries I invariably get sent. I will, however be writing some stories of my own, both of the six word and short variety, as well as allowing the poetic side of my brain to crawl slowly out of hibernation. If this sounds like something you’d enjoy reading, then read on, friends, read on, I’ll be back soon.

Snapshots of a Misspent Youth

Yesterday I was born.
And soon I am to die.
It’s happened many times before.
Each birth and death some great man.
An artist, musician, scholar,
A writer?
Personas never realised
As they pass beyond.
Never remembered, never great.

And it’s for no reason other than this.
That in my strange and twisted mind,
‘Tis worse to have tried my best, and failed,
Than never to have tried at all.

Six Word Stories: 13.

He left before her beauty faded.