Victim of vanity

This week, for the Esther Newton Weekly Writing Challenge, Esther has given a word prompt. The word is FEAR.

Oh Doctor, dear Doctor don’t question my sanity
I know it’s unwise but I’m a victim of vanity
I kept myself young for three hundred years
until your predecessor’s news confirmed all my fears
I’d been under the knife far too many times
and he’d almost lost count of his ethical crimes
I’d had jobs on my breasts, my legs and my nose
he’d stretched all the skin from my head to my toes
and it wasn’t just once or even just twice
but frequently, against the wisest advice
it came as a shock, though not a surprise
when he looked deep into my new glass eyes
and declared that my flesh was worse than shoddy
and the skin which had hidden one inch of my body
now stretched over the whole of the plain
and he said if he tried to stretch it again
it would probably rip and my works would fall out
and next time I couldn’t rely on grout
I know it was wrong of me when I insisted
and I know the late doctor should have resisted
I’ll always regret his untimely demise
when he slipped on one of my fallen glass eyes
I’ll always be grateful for your quick thinking
when you scooped up my skull just as I was sinking

I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again
you saved my life when you preserved my brain
it’s not too bad in this pretty jar
with my new glass eyes I can see quite far
but there is one thing that’s getting me down
I see that my grey matter’s turned a greeny brown
and I fear that no man will want to woo me
if greeny-brown grey matter is all that they see
and I’d like a nice new colour to keep up with fashion…
they tell me shocking pink ignites men’s passion

©Jane Paterson Basil

Yay! It’s the weekend!

I have a guilt ridden secret, a single desire
it’s a deep throaty tickle that would light my fire
It’s a naughty little want and I’ll tell it to you
In the form of a simple, catchy Haiku

coffee coffee cof
fee coffee coffee coffee
coffee coffee cof…

Anarchy in the weekend! Burn the text books! Write bad poetry!
Have a cup of coffee!

©Jane Paterson Basil

Full house

Writing 101: Day 5.

Today we are asked to select a tweet and write a post inspired by it. I have chosen:

I just now realized self storage really is where you store all your past selves.

— Leah Reich (@ohheygreat) June 21, 2015

Once, she was small and innocently alone. As she grew, they moved in, singly, at intervals, wafting the intimate fragrance of their existance. They never aged. Many years passed before she noticed them.

She asked no questions. There was just the freshness of each budding experience. She absorbed, but didn’t recognise the changes. On wild days she inhaled sunshine, ate up the wide grassy tracks with her feet; her eye on today’s exciting target, tomorrow invisible, the previous day less than a memory. Thrilled with her athletic skills, she sometimes felt as if she could fly.

In school, other children milled in distant circles. Bewildered by their otherness, she stared at the sky and dreamed herself different. With her first unseen shadow behind her, she smiled and pictured a future.

Now ageing, she sits by a west-facing window and watches the sun set. Thinly veiled women and children jostle, banging into her, craving rebirth. Each has her little circle of familiars.

She feels pulled in different directions. Briefly she embraces a three year old tot who is making a cake, beating it with a little battery-run mixer. She murmers soothing words to a young woman with a black eye, who limps towards her, needing to be heard. She speaks fondly to a mother with similar features, who cradles a baby.

She tries to ignore the woman with the friendly face who is timidly waving from the corner, concealing her secret misery while she patiently listens to a teenager’s anxst.

Turning back to the window, she spies the boy, leaning against a tree, staring directly into her eyes. He is always there, imploring to be let in, and she finally realises that he is not a boy after all, just a girl who wants to be free.

She is tired. She needs to put her past to bed.

©Jane Paterson Basil