dark side of the moon #11 - part 2

You can never know what type of people the person you just accidently bumped into is...

pencil and watercolor sketch by dsnake1



dark side of the moon #11 - part 2


She is lying, of course. She will not fight. She knows I came prepared. The vampire gives a scream so loud that glass bottles shatter, packets drop off shelves and the room shakes. In an instant, she has morphed from a woman into a hideous giant bat-like creature. I reach for my shotgun, she wanted to lunge at me, changes her mind, and instead flies straight up, punches through the thatched roof. I let off a shot as the roof started caving in. Through the hole I could see her silhouette against the grey sky getting smaller. I waited a short while in case she changes her mind and returns, but did not. I had to go too. The military patrols could have been alerted and I do not want to stay around answering awkward questions.

**

The businessman was on his way home to his villa on the outskirts of Bangkok. He has just attended the launch of his new hotel at Pattaya. He was almost dozing off in the car when his driver braked suddenly. There was something on the road in front of the car. In the bright headlights of the car they could see the outline of a person. A woman. There were no other cars or vehicles at this time of the night. The normal instinct is to start the car and roar off. But the businessman ordered a bodyguard to get out and investigate. The bodyguard went out, his pistol drawn. After a while he came back. "Boss, it's a young woman, and she's alive. What do we do with her?"



270 words

10/10/2021
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The End. Maybe a part 3, let's ask the Muse.

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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2023

dark side of the moon #11 - part 1

You can never know what type of people the person you just accidently bumped into is...

photo by xusenru at pixabay enhanced with Nik Collection


dark side of the moon #11 - part 1


Tonight, the weather is balmy and humid, not a good time for work. I stopped the jeep just outside the shop. It is a nondescript, dimly lit small wooden structure just outside the village, among paddy fields and banana plantations. A large coca-cola sign was nailed to the door, and I push it open and walk in, and I smell it immediately, a faint pungent scent with hints of plumeria. She sits at a table, close to a refrigerator, writing on a book, with neat shelves of dried food and condiments around her. This is a general store, after all. She unfolds her legs and stands up, her light pink ao dai flowing with her curves. She smiles and says, "what took you so long?"

"How many were there?", I ask, referring to the bodies buried behind the house. "Ten, maybe. I have stopped counting." She smiles, then sighs. "In a different time we could even be lovers". In the low light of incandescent bulbs, there is no doubt that she is a beautiful woman. A beautiful creature. "I have to get their lives, their chi. I need to live", she says matter-of-factly.

I have been hunting her for decades, and have put down some of her kind along the way. But she is elusive, her trail winding and long. Amsterdam, Singapore in the 30's, Tokyo, just after the War, and now a village near an American camp just outside Saigon. "It took you some time, this chase, I was beginning to worry for you, but you took out our sister Matha in Amsterdam just after the First War ended". She continued, "I will never forgive you, I will try to kill you and maybe today I will get my greatest prize."

292 words

10/10/2021
**********


to be continued...

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Saori Hayami - [Awake] - ending theme for RWBY:Ice Queendom

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2023

dark side of the moon #10

and the moon comes crashing down...

Clipart by OpenClipart-Vectors at pixabay



dark side of the moon #10


i am thinking about the noise that lifted up
all the buildings like thrown lego bricks
still, like faraway dreams, i faintly
see strangers, walking, tripping,
calling names but i woke up on
what was once a street, dim
in the grey fog. faintly
i see a paramedic, the
man walking away
hey you can't
leave me like
fucking this!
he turns his face
he appears to be crying
perhaps there is too much
death and misery for one day
far too many awkward questions
a fine rain of grey ash is falling
just ash, flaky, dry, stinging lungs
to my right a dirty, naked mannequin
missing most of his hair and a
                                  mouth


25/06/2021
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The prompt at Poets And Storytellers United was "to burn". I think this comes close.

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A Perfect Circle - So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2022

dark side of the moon #9

that smile could hurt...

photo by Ventus17 at pixabay



dark side of the moon #9


1.
She said I was a special friend. I wondered what 10-year-old children meant by special friends. We laid in the long grass in the fields just outside the village, watching the clouds, the sky a shade of gloomy blue. She was holding a doll close to her body. The doll was naked. I pointed out that one of the clouds looked like a bunny. She said there was another bunny behind it. I looked long and hard. The clouds seemed to have merged into a ball of candy floss.

I turned my head and looked at her. She had pulled down her dress. She was naked.

2.
The villagers were baying for my blood. Disgusting child! How can you do such a thing! A couple of the villagers had suddenly chanced upon us in the field. Incensed, they dragged me and the girl back to the village without giving me a chance to tell my side of the story. In the village square, despite my parents' pleas, they whipped me with canes again. As the village was deciding what to do with me, the girl, who was quietly standing at the sides watching, came over and looked at me.

She gave me a smile. Or really a smirk. She was holding her doll. The doll was headless.


08/05/21
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because Halloween...

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Alessia Cara & The Warning - Enter Sandman

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

dark side of the moon #8

the night wind stirs
the fluttering ashes
that are your regrets

dsnake1 - 7th Month

photo by Devanath at pixabay



dark side of the moon #8



the glad headlights of the bus!

fear can travel much faster than
light despite what the books say

behind me an angry dark void
collapsing, ice pricks on skin
the weeds are grabbing my feet

but the bus is not what it seems
it is a thing of bamboo and paper
and the light i saw is it burning

it stops, rocking, ashes flying
despite the heat i am freezing

fear, fear are grabbing my feet



written 23/07/2019
revised 22/05/2021
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Shared on Writers' Pantry #86 at Poets and Storytellers United.

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"Stare at the dark too long and you will eventually see what isn't there"

-- Unknown

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

dark side of the moon #7

sometimes love can transcend other worlds...

photo by Alexas_Fotos at pixabay



dark side of the moon #7


Somewhere in Palestine, 2021

The children were playing Hungry Hungry Hippos when the soldiers stormed into the house. They stopped & watched the soldiers searching, knocking over things and do not understand what they were looking for. The elder boy tried to calm his sisters. Earlier, their father had gone out to the market to buy the hippo game, when the children said they wanted something to play. He had came back an hour later with the game, told the eldest son to look after the sisters, and had gone out again. And then, the soldiers came.

★ ★ ★

We are in body armour, helmets, loaded rifles. Spare magazines. Man, they are just three kids playing a Hungry Hippo game. What are we really searching for? There was really nothing much in the house. Except our boot marks. Wait, this new box for a children's game, where have we seen it before? Why yes, half an hour earlier. They had shot a man who had ignored an order to stop. He was carrying a same boxed game in a plastic bag.



03/06/2021
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This post was inspired by a video made by a Palestinian man. He made a video of how a simple magnetic fishing game, which he went out to buy earlier, could take his children's minds off all the shelling and the rockets outside. He was also seen comforting his daughter when a blast hit a building nearby. Tragically, the man was shot and killed a few days later while out in the streets...

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David Gilmour - In Any Tongue

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

dark side of the moon #6

The money in the box seems very little. For someone who has given much.

photo by robenmarie at morguefile


dark side of the moon #6


He is holding the erhu like an uneasy stick insect.
He knows there is not much cash in the old shoe box.
He wonders if he is going to go hungry again tonight.

He is having a reunion dinner with his old parents again.
Zhaojun, my Beauty, you turn your head and look at me!
A wide smile forms on his lips, not seen in many days.

The police are alerted to an old, still busker at the station.



original longish poem : 23/07/2019
revised to a sevenling : 14/10/2020
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Notes :
* erhu                  :  a two-stringed bowed musical instrument.
* Wang Zhaojun   :  one of the 4 Great Beauties of China.

* The original poem is very much longer. Changing it to a sevenling form condenses it to a more manageable, compact format with the imagery taking on a more enigmatic hue.

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"one shoe in the corner
standing upright
the other laying on its
side.

yes, some lives were made to be
wasted."

-- Charles Bukowski, it was just a little while ago

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

dark side of the moon #5

life's a drag, sometimes..

photo of Kyoto at night by dsnake1


dark side of the moon #5


there was always talk of downsizing
and now it wasn't just talk

he wondered what his wife was cooking
for dinner, it was not much lately

working on her figure, yoga she said,
was at her friend's playing mahjong

terry the dog drowned in the toilet bowl
just a couple of days back

it was getting thinner, anyway

he wandered mindlessly into the supermarket
the shelves were too much for him

maybe i can get something simple for dinner
just pop it in the microwave?

or not

he shouldn't had turned left into the casino.

\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
ten stories is too high, he thought.
to jump


15/02/2020
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“The sea is endless when you are in a rowboat.”

― Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

dark side of the moon part #4

As any little kid in school, I did art and crafts but the teacher always kept an eye on me.

pencil/ink sketch on paper by dsnake1



dark side of the moon part #4



I made a frog out of cockle shells glued together. It was a lovely thing, with two very dark eyes out of black beans. I painted its mouth blood red, and its body and head a livid green. I left it on its own to dry. A fly flew past it. I swear, the frog drooled.



02/01/2019
**********

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“have i gone mad?
i'm afraid so, but let me tell you something, the best people usually are.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

dark side of the moon, part #3

what an early morning walk through the neighbourhood can do to you...

photo by dsnake1



dark side of the moon, part #3


adjust your eyes to the night awhile. the long line of street lights, they are zombies coming out to play.

do not touch that empty plastic bag rolling, flailing across the zebra crossing. do you feel any wind?

no flowering trees around, but a scent of frangipani? and that lady just ahead, is she waiting for a taxi?



2018, or thereabouts
*****************

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"ashes
swirling
swirling
at your
bare feet"

-dsnake1, glimpse

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

dark side of the moon, part #2

imagine what a messed-up chair top can inspired...

photo by dsnake1



dark side of the moon, part #2



we have to land, she says. we have to jettison some stuff. the fuel, some cargo.
but the people down there, the villages?
fuck the villages, she says

and she runs her ferrari right through the lights...


20/10/2018
**********

this piece partly inspired by news of supercar drivers behaving badly...

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Rolling Stones - Paint It Black

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

dark side of the moon

The killing of a teenage girl more than a decade back made the news headlines then. The mother of the girl was arrested for the crime. The line between love and hate can be very fine...




photo by paulabflat
image from morguefile.com




dark side of the moon



if the moon could turn its face
so that she might live
that fateful moment
again
she would have counted to ten,
even two would do, waited for that
fog of red mist to die off
like an echo

but now

with blood-stained hands
and chained
and dragged
to hell
knelt before King Yama
and what can she tell
the Infernal Judge

that she loved
the daughter
she killed?


20/03/2009
**********


This is an unpublished work that has been sitting in the PC for a long time. Wonder why.

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“Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ), 2020