Short stories, poetry, haiku, expository and technical non-fiction. Report Cards and observations on writing. This began as my repository of exercises from the "What If?" self-help writers group at AOL. It has become more and less, since leaving AOL.

Sunday, April 24

Unconcious Mutterings #116

"Best friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. False friends are like leaves, found everywhere." ~Anonymous, but often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, who was fond of using it in speaking engagements.


Usually, I do this over in my regular blog The Daily Snooze and The Daily Snooze on AOL but something got into me and what is usually just a word list then became it's own "mad libs" and I figured what the hell...

I say ... and you think ... ?


1. Detachment:: Dehisc
2. Regard:: With Detachment
3. Community:: Project
4. Strike three:: You're out
5. Congregation:: Christians
6. Generous:: helping
7. Pretention:: airs
8. Pregnant:: oops!
9. Drinking:: whiskey
10 Brilliance:: Diamonds

Like Diamonds

He looked with detachment at the wound on the end of his forearm, it's lips gaping open in mute testament to a poor job of sewing as flaps of dehisced skin gaped open. Oh well, slap an old sock over it and call it good... So much for finishing the Community Project. It would be many months before the average do-gooder would forget the sight of blood spurting rhythmically onto the floor of the meeting hall they'd been constructing below him. One false move up on the overhead with a circular saw and it's "Strike three ... you're out!" He didn't even feel any pain until he tried to break his fall with his missing hand. He'd screamed for hours at the hospital.

Passing through the soup kitchen line, he graciously accepted the generous helping from the fellow dishing out the stew. Looked like it might be beef today. Not that he was complaining, mind you. He wasn't like those sick fucks with pretentions to nobility, putting on airs and holding forth on nonsensical subjects as though their opinion mattered. No siree, not him! As long as he had enough bucks from his SSI check for a bottle of whiskey, a flop that was snug and dry, and no one messing with him, he was happy.

Once upon a time he'd had a future. But he was young, stupid and got her pregnant. Oops! Any hope for a future went down the drain almost as fast as the marriage and the baby's bath water. He was reflecting on the spiraling water when his mind was illuminated with a blindingly bright white light, it's brilliance like those of the diamonds in the window of the jewelry store behind which he was copping a squat in the alley. That was the last thing he remembered, as the light faded with his life ... "like diamonds."


You wanna play? Go sign up with Patricia, that crazy chica, she'll treat you right. Send you words every week and everything. What you make of them is your business. Except you gotta leave a link to your stuff in the comments at La Luna NiƱa, cause the rest of us want to read what you write, too.

Like Diamonds © 2005 Wil Mosher All Rights Reserved

About Me

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Well past (by at least a decade) the half century mark. One foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel at the rim of the abyss and the view from here is disconcerting. I am a former student, pearl diver, cook, truck driver, firefighter, EMT, CEO, Town Fire Warden, mechanic, oiler, marine engineer and computer whiz bang. Mostly I sleep these days in an aluminum tube. And So It Goes... I waste my time reading blogs and kvetching about the weather, playing with our Schipperke sidekick, Ignatz McGraw and waiting hand by foot upon my wife, the Queen of our Hovel, She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO).