# November Challenge: "Being Alone"



## Chesters Daughter (Nov 1, 2013)

The prompt for this month's challenge, as chosen by Gumby is*: Being Alone*

You are free to interpret the prompt in any way you wish, though of course, site rules apply. If you are unsure of the challenge rules please read the 'stickies' at the top of the board.

*This challenge will close on the 15th of November.*

We are continuing to allow optional anonymity this month. You may post your entries yourself, or, if you'd like to remain anonymous, you may PM your entry to either myself, *Chester's Daughter**, or Travers.*

Kindly make sure your entry is properly formatted and error free before you submit. You have a ten minute grace period to edit your piece, but anything after that will likely see it excluded from the challenge. 

As usual, if you'd wish to protect your first rights, post your entry in the *workshop thread,** then copy a link to it in this thread. If you are posting anonymously, please be sure to mention on which board you'd like your entry posted in your PM. Public, or secure to protect first rights.

*Do not post comments in this thread. Any discussion related to the challenge can take place in the Bards' Bistro. Should it make a reappearance during the course of this challenge, *please refrain from utilizing the 'like' function until this thread has closed and the poll opened.*


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## toddm (Nov 2, 2013)

*At middle-night, on upland heights*

At middle-night, on upland heights 
along a shelf of time-scarred rock,
he would wander beneath the lights
of the glittering celestial clock.

But untold the hours he tarried there,
while wind seethed past him in the grass;
the moon sailed on the night-sea fair
and none came nigh him to harass.

Ever and anon on such mild nights
he made his bed in heather deep
until dawn touched the upland heights
to gently wake him from his sleep.


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## sokko (Nov 4, 2013)

*A Farewell*

O sallow moon, why are you so?
Forever weeping a tune of woe
Calling the lonely with a longing glow
Why are you sad?
Please let me know

Long have I seen you on this run
Wand'ring in circles since time was begun
O moon!
Do remember the battles you've won
Even you, in your moments, eclipse the sun

Here in your shadow I see you fly
Gazing down from your pedestal high
Lend me a shoulder and offer a sigh
For I
Alone and abandoned, here bid you good-bye


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## shedpog329 (Nov 4, 2013)

*Understanding Direction
*Spilling the outsides of God
was never a Sunday for him.

Everyday was turned downward
to meet the needs of the insides.

Beginning with speaking to God
was taking measures by the note

If I kept close eye toward the arrows
I would eventually find them.

They drift easy when God runs through them
But in all honesty I keep looking.


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## Pidgeon84 (Nov 5, 2013)

Wow, great entries so far. Makes me feel bad about mine 

  I look upon the ruins of time 
Once great walls of marble now lie in desolation
Shattered stain glass display the faces of once beloved
This temple of life now haunted and bare
And I search these piles of burning disdain for some sort of absolution
  But all I find is contempt
  With heavy eyes and weary soul I bear my burden 
  My skin sags and the color in my eyes grows dim
  The statues of what could have been follow me
  Watch with melancholy eyes as I wander my pantheon aimless
  Turning stone over and over, finding only imprints of the past
  I chase shadows for days
  Nothing in front, everything behind
  I call only to hear my own words echo back
  Sometimes my calloused feet find soft grass only to have it wither 
  The smell of fresh air drowned out by the centuries 
  Sometimes I find space uncharted only to fall back  
  I always fall back into my defiled sanctuary 
  My monastery of abysmal of seclusion


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## Pandora (Nov 6, 2013)

*That's Okay*

'You must get out more, leave this room, go somewhere'

_In the dark subway the air is dank,_
_one light swinging overhead casts shadows._
_Shadows over the many faces,_
_the many people waiting on the platform._
_
Some they lie and some they joke,_
_some are hidden with disguise,_
_some might care or pretend to care,_
_others can't be trusted.

__A small red ticket lies in my palm,_
_a ticket to take me somewhere.

My somewhere just to be.

__I can't keep up with somewhere though_
_I missed it by a moment._
_
I see my palm is empty now, _
_ my red ticket has been spent.
_
'That's okay,
 I know my somewhere just to be is in this room with me.'


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## midnightpoet (Nov 6, 2013)

A country morning


As I sit alone on my back porch
drinking coffee,
listening to the sounds
of the awakening day,
dawn creeps along
the horizon’s carapace,
and my soul breathes
deeply of the morning silence.
Sparrows mix with doves
around my backyard feeder
as cocks crow from nearby yards,
announcing daybreak.
As a light breeze tickles
the still green tree leaves,
the quiet continues.
Hummingbirds dance
about morning glories on our
fence among the violet and purple,
blue and pink.


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## dannyboy (Nov 9, 2013)

Nan and her Bin, my grandfather:
(and their truly missing knuckles)

I have this memory, conjured from photos,
or, perhaps, real, of that day in the cemetery
when they buried  Nan’s old Bin, my grandfather.

Nan’s hand, wrinkled like a washed sheet,
the third finger missing to the first knuckle, rests
heavily upon the casket, as she waits 
for the twin green straps (slow as a lizard’s blue tongue 
tasting air) to be withdrawn, lowering, therefore, the casket 
and within, the still body of Nan’s beloved Bin.

I can hear her thoughts in my mind (the years, a funnel
expressing the hidden moments we miss at the time) - How to explain,
with faded, crisp leaves rustling words along 
the cracked and pitted path and bunched-up cars 
humming eager to repel the day,
to the grandchildren lost in phones and fancies
that inside the casket,
his right hand, wrinkled, too, a matching washed sheet,
has the third finger missing to the same first knuckle?

How to explain, she thinks, I think, that she misses that missing finger
of his,
as much as anything can be missed
that is no longer there?

How to explain that being alone matters
because what is gone never leaves?


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## Chesters Daughter (Nov 12, 2013)

*Spring Training*

Legs steady
spine straight
shoulders squared,
she stood at the door,
those with no one to lean on
learn never to be lax.
She spun on her heel and left

for a date with a bunch
of blue hatted strangers
surrounding a slim table
in a freezing room,
but where was her groom?

Ah, yes, splayed on the sofa
watching whores disguised as dancers
as he worshiped Reverend Stern.
Howard, that is.

Dressed in a linen truck's best,
she waited for her number to be up,
watching a muted Jerry Springer
chastise kissing cousins.
Hours passed, as she, alone,
cultivated hatred with each inhalation,
until the orbs beneath her brows
became ebony glass
to absorb every beam of light
and keep the home fires burning.

Surely Satan would have begged her
to be his decorator
had she deigned to give him a peek.

She rolled off through swinging doors
into a fluorescent sunset,
grateful for the peace of dreamless sleep.
Rudely awoken to appendages
wrapped in wires,
she never tired
while battling back
aided by the biggest guns
in the apothecary.

At six hours,
she walked with the legs of a toddler,
at twelve,
her stride was as strong 
as a striped horse stampede,
at twenty four,
her slippered feet
left indents a foot deep
in the immaculate tile floor.

Quite stoned, but still sane,
she left the house of pain
only to return to another
where the sadist reigned…

but he was no more.

Yes, his carcass still cluttered her couch,
while his undeserving
filth filled lungs
siphoned the precious oxygen 
from her air,
but she had dismissed his essence;
like a parasitic nit,
she'd finally plucked him from her hair.

She stood at the jamb,
a gentle smiling lamb,
and with chin held high
issued a single laugh.
Certainly, he thought her daft,
but then he didn't know

in four or five months
she wouldn't need him for a thing
and both he and that couch
were going to learn the meaning
of the word swing.
Not the dance, of course,
a noun wouldn't do,
it's the verb she'll teach,
assisted by a bat or two.

Daydreaming of hitting one
out of the park
in the chill November dark,
she pined for tulips,
the bloom of which
would make alone official.


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## escorial (Nov 12, 2013)

being alone with myself
toothbrush stands alone
radiostation stays the same
first to leave and arrive
cook a meal for one
a cold bed always awaits


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## Travers (Nov 14, 2013)

*A Good Dog*

*​*We found him amongst the bracken
and brambles that line the field.
This faithful hound, lame from birth,
sicker still with age, sloped off to lie
alone,
to find whatever peace of mind
a canine can.

He was interred in his chosen spot,
marked by a stone inscribed with the words:
"Merlin. A Good Dog".


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## Chesters Daughter (Nov 15, 2013)

This challenge is now closed.


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