Month: Aug 2025

Jiggling the Jelly (microfiction)

06.08.2025

After a promise to write in the night, I sat there at my desk in my boxer shorts scratching away idly at my inner thigh as I endured a severe writer’s blank. I tried the usual methods to break the blank. A feverish search in my vocabulary of words. Reflection on an experiences that would inspire something. Themes.

Nothing worked.

There were certain things it was now best to avoid. That was not helping. Because it was those things that were on my mind the most. The unfinished business…

Suddenly I felt tired so I grabbed the laptop and lay on my bed. And, immediately when I done so, all the words and ideas came flooding in.

Curious. Had it been the change of scene? But why? I am comfortable at my desk and habituated to writing there. Then I realised. I had laid down. Which had changed the orientation of my brain.

I had jiggled the jelly.

That was what had sparked off the creativity. All I needed to do was to change the orientation of the mass inside my head. Maybe if I leant to the left, that would mean that I would produce poetry or soemthing like it. Then, the right might produce prose and non-fiction. Maybe if I leant my head back while it was straight, I could produce some good erotica.

So simple. All I had to do was to introduce different movements into my routine.

I tested it out. I lay down and tilted my head to the left. Failure. I started thinking of they, all the moments. They were on my mind frequently.

I tried the other side. It was worse. I started thinking of the big C word. My career. And out of work time too. I shuddered.

Why was the writing impulse so elusive today?

But if it was the jiggling of the jelly…

‘Eureka!’ I cried. The solution was so simple. I slapped myself on both cheeks and on my forehead. That would move it.

I pummelled away at my face with my open palm. Unfortunately, however, you can not get much writing done when you don’t have any free hands. The jelly was jiggered and not jiggled. And in all the experimentation, I had forgotten the idea I had when I laid on the bed. There was not going to be any story tonight.

My discerning, demanding readers would be most displeased.

Robot Cyrano (microfiction)

05.08.2025

(Written lying in bed after waking up.)

It was the words. They were not speaking the recognised words.

‘You cannot say individually. You have to follow convention. Peculiarities raise precautions.’

They looked sorrowfully at me. ‘What if I cannot?’

I advised them that for the next attempt, they should put a prompt into an artificial writing machine.

‘Are you serious?’ they asked me incredulously?

‘You are in dire need of a Robot Cyrano.’

‘It is not just the words. What about my actions and feelings? Cyrano is a fiction. Most of communication and speaking is not the words.’

‘The speculations of one that has shown little success. What do you have against a robot Cyrano? If they like your actions and feelings in addition to the words of predictability and convention, the words of a society, what is wrong with it? Technology assists humankind in all of its aims. Why not love? And then, Robot Cyrano is a people pleaser. Robot Cyrano will do the job.’

‘There is something awful in you. All is not fair in love and war’, they said. ‘I cannot corrode my voice to belong.’

So, they stumble and bumble. Because they won’t imitate. Because they won’t parrot Robot Cyrano. Because they have their own words. Because they don’t and can’t follow the acknowledged rules.

I am happy to ask the machine. After all, it works. There is an algorithm to connection.

α division (microfiction)

04.08.2025

Written in my head at a bus station in the morning.

α – I don’t agree

a – I don’t agree

α – You are wrong

a – You are wrong

α – I refute what you are saying

a – I refute what you are saying

A – You are wrong

α – You are wrong

a – You are wrong

A – Repent

α – Repent

a – Repent

A – Good riddance to you

α – Good riddance to you

a – Good riddance to you

A – Silence (You have hurt me. I can’t tell you how much.)

α – Silence (You have hurt me. I can’t tell you how much.)

a – Silence (You have hurt me. I can’t tell you how much.)

(A/α/a dreams of saying – I am sorry. I am sad. I miss you)

and/or (A/α/a dreams of revenge)

and/or (A/α/a dreams forever for the other to restart the conversation)

and/or (A/α/a buries it away and moves on)

Eyebrows (microfiction)

04.08.2025

Central Line into work

She wanted one eyebrow to be blue and the other to be green.

‘Why?’ they asked.

She said to be different. To be able to waggle her eyebrows so as to be received in a polychromatic perception. To confuse in blue. To judge in green. To be playful in colour.

They told her it was discordant, disarranged, disparate.

She said it was outrageous, outstanding, an outlier of style and sophistication.

Those are not good things they said.

Who are you to be gods of society? she cried.

We will have our wish upon a dish they proclaimed. There is a law of the face which we cannot misplace. For to do so would be disgrace.

So she shaved off her eyebrows and she unveiled her eyes, one blue and one brown. It was the talk of the town.

folded flower of paper (microfiction)

27.07.2025

At the risk of death, he packed everything of his strange self into the folded flower of paper. Neatly sealing everything in, neatly pressing down, neatly wincing when the paper cut into his thumb and finger, staining itself with his blood.

This paper rose, this unreal flower, he festooned it upon the wall of his house. The innermost was now on the outside. They came. They looked. They said that the paper flower was foul. They said that he, who had made the paper flower, that he was foul. They would have clawed his eyes out if they could and chopped at his fingers if they could.

The paper flower, hurt by the eyes and hurt by the words, it sighed in perfume. And the scent stung at the eyes of the haters. Their eyes watered and the tears fell. The tears were full of poison. They tore apart the paper flower.

And he? He was in the paper flower. They were tearing at him, clawing at him, ripping into him. He was unbuilt and uncreated, whittled down and scarred all over. Big gaping scars that screamed with oblivion. But he, he could not cry.

And so, they were happy.