It’s 2am on a school night and I should’ve been asleep hours ago. I hope mother doesn’t see the faint glow of the screen’s light under the bedroom door or there’ll be trouble. The Spectrum game is taking hours to complete; gold coins deviously hidden behind rocks and skulls. I’ve managed to find the rubber snorkel and navigate through the ocean to the second island, the lonely shopkeeper my only friend on arrival.

just one life…
struck down on the grave
by the pirate’s ghost

It’s 2am on a work night and I find the Spectrum emulator online; Treasure Island Dizzy my entertainment again. The hours of childhood frustration come back to me, though the holy bible provides protection from the pirate’s wrath this time. On the far island, the shopkeeper still dispenses boat parts to aid the escape from cartoon exile. But the morning’s coming and I’m struggling to locate the last coins to pay the ferryman….

walkthrough…
I can’t resist following
the instructions

Tim Gardiner

albert einstein never memorized the speed of sound. he said it was in a book anytime he really needed it. today my phone is bombarded with junk calls for a ‘cruise’ i have won. but they have my number on a list so they keep calling.

choosing
a new ringtone
i select a ‘fight song’

Michael Rehling

Overnight, his understanding of life grew worse.  He went looking for a barber, but ended up at the butcher.  He asked to be shorn, but, instead, was sawed.  Immediately, his financial worries doubled.  “I would give my life, he moaned, to make ends meet.”

life balance
falling hard
a three-legged stool

Peter Jastermsky

So strange to find you here, wasting under the weeds. Not only are you dead, you’re missing. No one left knows where your body is buried.
As a child, you were always in your mother’s sight.  She’s gone, too, no hand to lay on you.  But if a mother’s intuition lives on, she’ll turn over one last time, knowing you are two stones down.

silence . . .
so fluent
a language

Peter Jastermsky

this morning a grayness and rain –
remnants of hurricane Harvey
no wind   only rain
how quietly it falls through the pines
as though having spun away
from the eye of the storm
it only wants to rest
among the pine needles
already sleeping on the ground

Jerry Dreesen