New Writers

In today's 5 7 5 Issue

Haiku
New Writers
Ghost Story
Ghosts
That's Amaaaaaaaaaazing
Random Joke
Finish with a Song

Haiku a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.

New Writers
As you know, this site is here to promote new and existing writers. To this end here is four new writers exploring the trope of Haiku.

First off Brian Mack

The leaves fall off

The trees in autumn

Red yellow brown

Poetic licence

Eclectic vowels abound

Criminal sound

Mining town decline

Industrialisation

Scars the nation

Now Ruth Everitt

I really love food.

From all corners of the world. 

It brightens my mood. 

Karen Evans

Owl tweets in the night

All I want is sleep while morning

Their hooting is so unreal

Finally Bev Golding

Lost and lonely man 

Walking on the barren land

Cloaked in cold cruel fate

Heart frozen in ice

Love buried in winter snow

The numb chill of loss  

Ghost Story

As a regular reader, you will be aware that several of my stories have recently been dramatised and turned into radio plays.

Here is the latest, you get to read it before the audio.

She is there.

I know, before I even open my eyes. There is no palpable scent, no weight of her on my bed, but, I know she is there.

She always has been. I prise my eyes open from the crust of sleep and see her. She sits cross legged and hunched. Skeletally thin and pale in the night light, such as it is. Her dark hair hanging down like shroud around her. She has no colour in monochrome darkness.

Prickles of pins and needles run up my spine to the tips of my fingers, the stigmata of sleep.

It is far too dark to see beyond the hollows of her eye sockets but, I know from the angle of her head that she is looking directly at me.

But, that’s not all is it? I feel that stare as one may feel the heat from a stranger passed on a stair.

You cannot see that look but you can feel its impact. The hairs on the back of your head a barometer of a sense beyond the five.

I never speak. I have thought of it, but, I never do. In truth the dread I feel makes the obvious assumption that my vocal chords would be paralyzed, frozen in that eternal moment in time.

I am sure that the cold sweat forming on my skin may turn to diamonds of ice at any second. My body is a weather station trapped within the winter of my sheets.

And still she stairs, my ever constant night companion.

Strong emotions are hard to maintain. Anger dissipates, happiness fades, as does, fear.

Slowly, oh so slowly, my eyes succumb to the evenings death of sleep. I am unable to fight the loss of conscious will, and float into the black.

When I awake I see the dust moats float in shafts of sunlight through my dusty curtains. They look like snowflakes suspended in light. They settle, but do not melt.

She, on the other hand, has melted away, banished by the daily light. Our nightly game of hide and seek against the ticking clock of evening to be repeated, again and again.

She has never spoken a word to me. I know that when she does, as I know she must, for me, the night will be eternal.

Lemurs take their name from the Latin lemures meaning ghosts, because of their mysterious and mainly nocturnal lifestyles.

In 2004, the Indian Statistical Institute in New Delhi was closed after reports of visits from the ghost of a dead student.

The Royal Albert Hall in London is supposedly haunted by a 19th-century organ maker’s ghost.

A recent poll reported that 87 per cent of Chinese office workers believe in ghosts.

Swaziland Prime Minister Prince Bhemkimpi was reported in 1995 to have complained about ghosts terrorising his subjects...

the ghosts hadn’t invaded the royal household supposedly because they were afraid of the dogs.

A woman on the Isle of Wight complained of a ghost in 1995 that turned on lights and electrical equipment.

An energy company spokesman said it was the first time a high bill had been blamed on a ghost.

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.” (Charles Dickens).

According to a report in 2011, 25 per cent of Britons say they have seen a ghost.

The largest gathering of people dressed as ghosts is 560 people and was achieved by Mercy School Mounthawk (Ireland) in Tralee, Ireland, on 24 March 2017.

I own the chewed pencil that Shakespeare used to write his famous works. He used to chew on it so much that I can't tell whether it's 2B or not 2B.

FINISH WITH A SONG

This is The Vapours, Turning Japanese.