Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time
I told a tale
I did not hear
that hot wind wail,
imagination
setting sail
across a sea of obsession.

But here I sit
and hear the sound
of magic whirling
round and round
image, symbol,
word unbound
the engine of my travels.

Between the stars
and midnight sea
I sail to find
just what can be
teased into
words of fantasy
one keystroke at a time.

Imagination
into tale -
the words, they own me
as I sail.
They push me into
What If's gale -
the telling has my soul.

One of These Days

One of those days
where
I sit and ponder
the odd images
that stream
through my mind
the touch
of raw wool
running through
my fingers
mythologies
that almost
no one remembers
the feel
of wet sand
on a winter's day
thinking of
what I would
really
rather be doing
and realize
just how
not normal
my normal
has turned out to be.

Scary

What's the scariest story you ever read? I read all sorts of disaster/true crime/horror stuff, but the one story that gave me the most willies must have been Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." (If you don't know, this is the piece the Terminator series bounced off of.)

I read it first when I was a kid. I think I was ten or eleven. I was busily devouring my dad's stash of SF novels, a lonely kid who loved the geewhiz mindboggling but rational escape early and mid 60s SF was filled with.

It was in a collection of short stories. I don't remember the name of the anthology. But I remember feeling the helplessness of the group of people who were caught in this machine as toys to be tortured, and the fate of the narrator. Must have represented perfect hell to me at that time, cause when I bring back the memory of my reaction, I still get the willies.

Good piece of writing, that.