In Cameo

8 lines curve upon the screen
a minimalist caricature
of the puppet master.
the music begins
Gunoud’s Funeral March of a Marionette
his silhouette floats by
an eternal cameo.

definitive, trademarked
totally identifiable
this self deprecating cartoon of his old man’s curve.
the ponchy, chubby, tubby soul
this master of suspense looks
weirdly like an elder Tintin without his trusted dog.

He’s suited up
Hairline receding
double chin flapping as he walks and talks
Those eyes, peering down his nose
through glasses that were never there
Over his pug dog droopy jaws
penetrating, demanding, interrogating,
making us look deep into our own souls
maximising the fear we see within.

he always appeared slightly aloof
from his herd of actors
like his cameras
props for his craft
pitching up to transform us into willing voyeurs
to bring our gaze in close
only to find him there “in cameo”

© Sheila Ash, 2015

 

Me and I

This weeks prompt was a silver Victorian/art nouveau hand mirror similar to this picture. Our tutor asked us to look at ourselves in the mirror, image some 10 or 20 years previous and see where that reflection took us in our writing.

I found this quite hard as I don’t normally do much character based writing, but after a hesitant start which ate up some 5 of my 20 minutes, I came up with the following.

 

 

 

I see you, you look at me
Are we the same?
Always and forever linked
in past and present,
Stepping together into our future
You pull one way, I another.
Yet somehow we find a common path.

If I met you on the street
would recognition follow?
Would I like you?
Find you fun?
Your smile infectious,
your skins soft,
your eyes appealing?

You tell me off when courage fails
Laugh at my silliness
Shoulder my pain.
Know all my fears and dreams.

Are you my missing soul mate?
my partner in crime?
my unborn twin
whose dent is still in my ribcage
or merely a reflection of me?

© Sheila Ash, 2015

In the end everything simply began…..

 

Divine hands at work.
Particles expand.
Whatever! Am I bothered?
Does it matter? Dark matter
Big bangs, multiple universes
expanding ever outwards into nothingness.

What was there before?
A void?
the absence of all is surely something in itself?
A singularity?
Located where? in what? on what?
The Kantian fallacy of absolutes
gives way instead to spacetime curvatures.

Dynamic, unfixed, shaped by matter and energy
bubbles in the boiling pot
summing possible histories
into inflationary expansion
strong gravitational fields propelling
a quantum potential?

There amongst the thermal cosmic background
a cosmological constant?
Einstein’s blunder revived as the accelerator
for dark energy ignition
of life.

Of life. Of death.
Transitions measuring time’s passage,
confirming our finite nature within the Infinities
and Aristotle’s adage that something eternal is more perfect than something created

© Sheila Ash, 2015

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html
http://earthsky.org/space/what-if-the-universe-had-no-beginning