fff#45

late but clearly not never; my flash fiction friday #45 [inclusion trigger]: sea cockroach and the sand dollar band

...and then space/time snap back; vision clear...empress diablesse come back to myself here, now, as ever...still a woman in a place where woman gets no respect. black woman in a place where black women get no respect. a citizen of a place where citizens get no respect from self, fellow citizens, or those we choose to represent us, where daily abuse of the senses sending we more than mad...st.anns! where we going?
and this is why i exercise my power. because is my only means of control. and because we deserve it. i am the superhero we deserve. when i hunt, when i choose, i take the ones we can afford to lose. i take the ones who add nothing to the whole of us, we the people. i take the ones who just taking up space, sucking up oxygen wasted on their mediocre talents, to then hawk+spit in our genepool. i take them as necessity demands, as practice while i wait to find the one, wait for the right one to give me the child i need.
tonight is hunt night. moon full. is we time now.
in this time is a new "village dance", reinvention of tradition, we go a dancehall now. tonight sea cockroach and the sand dollar band playing on the grandstand and i there in my glory. these days the dances sweatier, music grimier, men slimier, all the easier for empress diablesse to stand out from the crowd, a different kinna woman...mysterious, sexy in my long, clinging skirt, not your usual type, but impossible to ignore. hips sway, beckoning your eyes to linger, lips call you wordlessly, soundlessly, you hear only your blood pounding in your ears to the rhythm of my heartbeat...this part i enjoy...
i pull, i coax, i finesse...without needing to speak i make myself felt from across a room, make my choice and take without you ever knowing it wasn't your idea, your conquest, your triumph. you think you get through, think you win, you think yourself king because you believe you possess a queen, never realising nobody can contain the empress...the lesson of the hoof is stoop to conquer.
tonight i hunt. for the darkness, to fill the black hole inside myself, i hunt.
sea cockroach and the sand dollar band mashing up the grandstand; i survey my prey. knowing how unsuspecting they all are, intoxicates...this part i like...i select carefully: sweet enough to please my eye, smart enough to please my mind for the little time i'll keep him, shittong enough to feel no guilt over...
i draw him close so he can find me irresistible. i play the mas impeccably; practice makes perfect and my mas must play perfect when the right one finally come. this one, tonight, not the one, but enough for right now, enough to keep the visions quiet, enough to let me sleep after.
he will offer to take me home. many many moons ago it woulda be on his bicycle, or even his back, slowly getting heavier, anticipating his inevitable dread, his building fear when the growing weight exhausting him and he realising he lost, in the dark, in the bush, with a strange woman he pick up in a dance, a "loose" woman? tonight he'll drive, windows down for the cool night air, finally we all stop sweating for the day. he won't have the warning sound of hoof dragging ever so slightly in the grass by the side of the road. times change, we [immortal] must change with them, try not to seem out of place. tonight this man drives [me] to his death.

walk good.

flash fiction friday #45

flash fiction friday#45 [inclusion]trigger: [sea cockroach and the sand dollar band]

usually, an inclusion-trigger (as opposed to a specific starter, like fff#43's before the fall of the snake oil empire...) is a batch of seemingly unrelated words that must all be included in the piece (eg. fff#23+24; probably going so nex' week) but i put this one [inside] because the phrase isn't to be separated into its word-components for inclusion, but maintained+used as written.
big-up nickolai salcedo for the trigger; like allyuh-self!

rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.55a.m. friday, trinbago timezone; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago timezone.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment on my blog).
you may join in at any time prior to the deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on my trigger-post or fasbook note or whatever, once we can all read it- please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends on fasbook; there's a way to create public links for that, right?).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago timezone.*[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i'll leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.

fff#44

i real late with this one because in true fff-style i experiment plenty; i struggled to finish (would still call it a draft at this stage; not as sweet as las' week's fiction) because of my insistence i must marry ideas i know not technically for each other, but tha's the fun in fff, ent? i knew i was undertaking a kinna impossible challenge but once i had the idea to connect the unconnected i couldn' not try, especially when we have this perfect forum for exploration...sooo...this may not work at all; tell me what does/not so i know how the experiment went, nah...flash fiction friday #44 trigger [left open as title, as starter, or for inclusion, by ellipses before+after phrase]: ...when the sky broke...

when the sky broke and judgement call and the flooding start in central and the pitch lake overflow, the midnight robber and the great bat, freshly installed in the mas camp, were otherwise occupied and miss the warning that they done losing ground, literally and figuratively...
since the grande dame lorraine get run the bat busy studying the treasury and the robber on heself as usual, now trying to figure out how to maintain he dreader-than-dread now he suddenly come man-friday; didn' expect when he day dawn it would be under bat wing and not he own broad black brim, but he was there studying empress diablesse showing face (and hoof! in broad daylight!) when the bat come whispering in dark night about tides turning on her-greatness the grande dame and advantage to be taken. robber always for capitalising on somebody downfall so he fall in, but since they take up residence in the mas camp the bat busy counting coppers, and he realise it too easy ramfling people when you's the regime; without the challenge of constantly terrifying, the robber find heself bored. and boredom is a gateway to contemplation, dangerous with these dark minds...is not like he was a stranger to the idea of introspection, but moreso retrospection, stopping short of actual analysis; midnight robber tradition is extreme self-proclamation+aggrandisation, a rapper flaunting his cred, focused on his terrible achievements, from tearing his way out his mother's body to birth he own self to becoming a mastermind of death+destruction+corruption and all the atrocities proudly committed along the way inspiring fear+horror...but boredom have him thinking deep.
tings that never give pause before heavy on his mind now. outside is anarchy as people losing land+homes to rising waters in some parts and rivers of pitch bubbling to the surface snaking silently, suffocatingly through others, and marauding masquerade bands taking advantage of the vacuum as the bat still counting and the robber paralysed by his mind turning inside. outside people fighting, fleeing weeping skies and pitch flowing faster than thought possible, undiluted by the nonstop torrents from above, and the robber lock inside, trapped by echoes he used to just ignore. talk 'bout his evil acts, pong his foul, stink attitude, question his intelligence, but he done prove heself there and nobody could tell him he eh great+terrible as he is; and is he running this mas camp?! but they did whisper in corners that behind that front is a gateway rasta, a non-threatening ease-into the dark thrills of jouvay and night mas no real woman need entertain, an acceptable rebellion for straight-haired wannabes supposedly seeking danger but really just playing theyself, and that- that!- he manhood cyah take. for the first time he acknowledging his trajectory, gateway rasta fuelled by the rage of his robber-self slowly, slyly using that position to rise, advancing through them ranks of protected women and abusing their docility to grow his reputation for being a hard, rough tess; by the time he first encounter the bat, gateway rasta had become beti-slayer, and now he hadda wonder if everything else he ever do is just to counteract that.
outside the mas camp, chaos. sky+earth split open and no way to dam either deluge with the grande dame lorraine long gone, bat m.i.a., robber in existential crisis and no nex' big bandleader in sight; anybody who could just abandoning the island. empress diablesse watching+waiting, quiet in the forest where she know she safe until flooding subside and she could see all who might pose a threat and decide how to dispose of them before she show face again. all she waiting on is dry enough ground to plant she hoof because she done decide if she eternity is this place she might as well make it she own; she tired hiding hoof and hunting under cover of dark; why it doh have man throwing theyself at she foot, begging for a chance with woman so powerfully connected as she very name imply? and if the men and them too weak, why la diablesse hiding? best she come out and show sheself and just take her pick of them until she make the child she want and have no need of them again.
when the sky finally clear and the pitch harden and people start venturing out to survey the damage and see what could salvage, empress diablesse use her camouflage skills like never before; insteada making she corpse-face young+beautiful to fool man, she make the mas camp an illusion of pitch-preserved decrepitude. she secret sheself by the gate to maco everybody who show too much interest, marking who looking in the yard trying to make out what happen with the great bat and midnight robber. them she would deal with first...

walk good.

flash fiction friday #44

flash fiction friday #44 trigger: ...when the sky broke...

rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.55a.m. friday, trinbago timezone; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago timezone.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment on my blog).
you may join in at any time prior to the deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on my trigger-post or fasbook note or whatever, once we can all read it- please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends on fasbook; there's a way to create public links for that, right?).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago timezone.*[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i'll leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.

for the record:

december2014.
ma replace the bartels' microwave, the 1st+only (until now) ever to grace this house, going strong about 30some years (yes, going, me eh know why the arse she interfere with[replace] the damn ting!) and for some reason it bothering me way more than the stove she replace without a word a 2weeks prior (wasn' actually bothered about the stove, just the complete lack of notice about a clearly planned major event). felt a need to record what feels like momentous change to me...in the less-than-a-year since fred, also gone is furniture (from beds to seating+table), stove, microwave, cutlery, other minor kitchen appliances, tv, shelves, dishes and cookware that populated the house of my childhood...
in the positive column, i did discover that we, the remaining trinidad bartels, are the proud owners of a slap-chop.
walk good.

fff#43; before the fall of the snake oil empire...

my flash fiction friday #43, triggered with italics[below] and inspired by recent events...i having conversations with different friends lately about how i doh know what i look like, have no concept of the bumsee people tell me sweet, have no idea what it is about my winery that make anybody care to watch when it have champion bubblers and professional winer-gyuls out there with proper antics and i just dancing because it feel good...until today; today a friend show me footage she take when i get call onstage when the canals perform my song friday night. it felt like my 1st time really seeing myself, was definitely the 1st time i feel like i see what other people see when they watch me, and all i can say is, i honestly had no idea...the amazement and slight disbelief i still feeling about that, plus the vibes the canals and the blackyard hitting me right now with raw(jouvay/carnival2015 sooncome!) plus [italicised]trigger that hit a sweet-spot with me:

before the fall of the snake oil empire we was in a collective ecstasy. for a full generation before the collapse, men throughout the country reaching the point of spontaneous erection followed by full-body paroxysms at the mere mention of her-greatness, women orgasming uncontrollably if they only think of her-greatness a nani-hair too reverently. eyes rolling back in heads, bodies danced themselves to exhaustion in the streets, shoes+clothing rend leaving the fervently faithful nationalists exposed to alarmingly rising numbers of severe sunburn and heatstroke deaths in the late 2280s. nobody coulda predict the sudden downfall of her-greatness...well, almost nobody; the only one who did get sacrificed to the island for treason, for traitorous behaviour against the holy state republic of snake oil, established year-2120, one-with-her-greatness, the grande dame lorraine.
when empress diablesse first open she mouth in public, when she first say the words, utter the idea that bring down the kingdom, they take she for [a] mad[woman]. everybody hear and refuse to see and just keep it moving because to hear the unspeakable is to think the unthinkable, and nobody was ready to leggo the grande delusion of dame lorraine and everything she represent for the now, well, [the] then, the now, then...
when empress diablesse stand up quiet quiet in the square on murray street then suddenly dash 'way the bottle of snake oil in the dirt by she foot, nobody expect the revelation that follow. nobody expect to see hoof on display jus' so in broad daylight, nobody really even believed in them ting again...la diablesse who? this was the age of the ageless, infinitely-bosomed, eternally aroused, gros lolo, promising forever to this tropical island paradise running a booming economy entirely on hedonist-nationalism, from basic orgasm-based services to specialised aids+assistance to extreme clean-up, related travel and health-care and hospitality industries; full-service hedonism fully supporting a nation of believers in the promise of eternal life for their earthly morality. the grande dame lorraine make everybody happy making everybody happy by dragging what was taboo from jouvay into daylight, stealthily infiltrating the pretty mas of the upper class with the dark inversion of jamette humour to grease the easy slip+slide down the twisted road to the holy state republic of snake oil, established year-2120. the oil was the one export of our service-nation, and we use it to grease everything from palms to waistlines, and poles to politics...until empress diablesse show sheself, lift skirt hem to reveal proof that the grande dame was not the only deity left we, not the only leader-saviour, nor the only way. she say stop imbibing the oil and claim we true power, use what we do on we backs+bellies not as the means+end but as a way to own the world...
the grande dame lorraine denounce such gallerying immediately: obviously empress diablesse distracting from her ulterior motive; she who tied to this island by the dead weight of she cowfoot and insatiable desire for not just the child she need he seed to make, but to thief everyman very mind+soul, to consume his contents to feed her hunger and fill her empty insides, she need to expand her hunting ground because if she take all she want from here the economy go fail for lack of diversity of service providers, remember time long like twine and her thirst immortal...
the sacrifice of the empress diablesse soon follow and it was the beginning of the end of the empire, though not of la diablesse, ever...local hedonist-nationalists couldn' square with the desecration of a deity, even an old one they had forget until the day she make a stand in the original redlight district. they start to turn against the system.
her-greatness gradually come to inspire fits of violence rather than the previous passions. people come to resent servicing heathens to feed their families and turn from a faith that demand such indignity. paroxysms of violence escalate until la grande dame get ambush+planass by a sexually-frustrated mob who run she from town and clear the way for the great bat to dance in in the middle of the night and take over the mas camp, install he pardner midnight robber as security h.n.i.c., and usher in the new age of iniquity-inequity.

walk good.

flash fiction friday #43

back by popular demand! or at least, some people i like ask, and i feeling to write, too, so we on like a socks, and off like molly's drawers; wash yuh foot and jump eeen...
keeping it simple for this 1st foray for at least some of us, i going with original-style triggering, a starter insteada inclusion or structural challenge; flash fiction friday #43 trigger:
before the fall of the snake oil empire...

rules of engagement [this week i acknowledge late-posting by nearly an hour, so feel free to recoup that time re:deadline; i eh go vex]:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.55a.m. friday, trinbago timezone; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago timezone.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment on my blog).
you may join in at any time prior to the deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on my trigger-post or fasbook note or whatever, once we can all read it- please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends on fasbook; there's a way to create public links for that, right?).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago timezone.*[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i'll leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.

medea [hashtag useit]

a propos that insteada preparing for the single rehearsal i get before playing medea for an audience, i get to spend today going through my dead [less than a year] father's business papers so we can pay off his debt?
walk good.

now taking requests...

i saying in front, this post may feel erratic. but i figure few enough people reading and if i content to write it, well, is my blog, ent?
so, someting fun las' week, i in the car, alone, en route to rehearsal (the museum of difficult women performance was vibes) and they finally (finally!) play naughty by menace, sorry, m1 on the radio, which, by this point, i waiting on days now, and i get to take in them verses properly, and lemme tell yuh, halfway in, mr.menace, sorry, m1 had me blushing in the car all by meself! he hadda get big-up. he get on bad dey...
someting not fun las' week: asshole police. now i wasn' there; he tell me the story immediately after it happen but i wasn' actually there and i talking from memory, but that doh change this fuckery...so we rehearsing@ the bigblackbox in the blackyard maybe 9pm-ish the other day, tech week for continuum dance project's 10th anniversary production of sonja dumas' new ballet the museum of difficult women, and chinee on lights; he need to get some nex' equipment so he+roger walking the 3blocks back to lil house to jump in the car and go, in the neighbourhood roger living+working(+walking+running) in over 20years now. between the blackyard and lil house police roll up on them for a stop+frisk and roger find heself up against the wall, hands spread above he head. he point out they eh do anyting to warrant this treatment and get talk 'bout his all-black kit, including tam+hoodie (not up/on) and how if he only put up his hood he would look like a bandit. roger, of course, point out the obvious, that while wearing all-black+hoodie might be someting a bandit would also do, doing so does not necessarily or automatically make him a bandit. he even bother to explain that he in the arts, walking the few blocks from the venue he runs and operates from, to his home of many years to carry the lighting technician (and them done suspicious of chinee wrench hanging offa he pants) for equipment and we who work backstage in theatre wear all-black on purpose for the job...only to be told he have a right to carry a change of clothes so he doh end up in the street in all-black looking suspicious. because apparently it eh just police, is fucking fashion police we have out here now.
i cyah even pull together enough words for my outrage at this kinna profiling; all you doing is walking down the road; how the fuck the police could tell you what you can+cyah wear?! black clothes illegal now?! this is the shit that make me irate. this is why i have to immediately go in the opposite direction anytime i see police, because my arse will get in trouble when i lose my little mind the day they give me some fuckery like that to hold. better roger than me, yes...
[related thoughts?] my whole life i know myself to be bigger than i apparently am. i know i take up space. plenty space. i fill a room; when i enter my presence is felt through no effort on my part, i just being, but i occupy space and exert a force. i solid. i am a performer audience members are shocked to discover the offstage size of. and i eh know where this disconnect come from but the disconnect slowly becoming clear to me; i watching footage+photos of me onstage nex' to people i consider my size and seeing myself petite. i confuse. i know i bigger than that, i feel bigger than that, i am bigger, i bigger than that! but then i see more photos+footage confirm my tinyness...my dancing as big as i know meself to be, but my actual physical self, is small. i am distressed. i find lately i have to be careful i doh dance off all my cushiony parts and get skinny or i feel like only half a person. who is this little female dancing out my liverstring? i wonder if this confusion is like what gender dysphoria feel like; all i know is, it very disconcerting to suddenly find oneself not large enough to support one's lifelong invincibility complex...
and maybe said complex is wha's prompt me to do ting like read a brand-new, completely unvetted story in front an audience, and now this: sweet trini's urban folk tales, now taking requests!
i figure, i like to experiment, love a challenge as part of the writing process, and need/want/will be writing more, so why not truly challenge meself? so i taking writing/fiction requests and/or triggers [re:triggers, search blog for "fff"/"flash fiction friday" (buncha numbered triggered-story posts)] with the promise of writing to suit; and yes, i'd consider non-fiction requests but reserve right of refusal and will write@discretion (mine) only. so wha' you feel to read? request via comments...
and on that note, i fall for this poem so instanteously i hadda share:

The Writers
(On constantly mishearing ‘rioting’ as ‘writing’ on the BBC)
There has been writing for ten days now
unabated. People are anxious, fed up.
There is writing in Paris, in disaffected suburbs,
but also in small towns, and old ones like Lyon.
The writers have been burning cars; they’ve thrown
homemade Molotov cocktails at policemen.
Contrary to initial reports, the writers
belong to several communities: Algerian
and Caribbean, certainly, but also Romanian,
Polish, and even French. Some are incredibly
young: the youngest is thirteen.
They stand edgily on street-corners, hardly
looking at each other. Long-standing neglect
and an absence of both authority and employment
have led to what are now ten nights of writing.
Amit Chaudhuri

walk good.
ps: and watch dimitris papaioannou's nowhere (in memory of pina bausch); how much can be effected with so little, such simple movement with such impact...