This month’s winner says, “Thanks for keeping literature alive! I enjoyed the event. It was refreshing and novel—it gives writers a sense of community and a reason to be social.” Aw, thanks, Brad!
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Prompts:
Character: Pilgrim
Action: Crashing
Setting: Secret Room
Phrase: “Don’t wait up.”
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The Bus Chronicles
by Brad Baymon
Here I stand!
Upon a fast moving train
as it passes by residential buildings with
glimmers of light.
I notice 4 bystanders who look like tourists,
2 men, 2 women.
The women are conversating,
the men impassive as they stare out the window into a cool dark night.
I notice the train’s lights flicker!
The women’s dialect changes,
my body temperature rises,
I feel a strange sensation all over my body.
As I raise my head I catch the farewell of a dying sunset.
Boom! All thing converging into one.
Boom! Time becomes lost within the frames of a second.
Boom! I am everything.
Present in the secret room
I’ve just entered in the reality never found.
The pilgrim in a place conveniently hidden from eyes that envy the most.
I see a young boy lavish his girl friend with kisses,
my heart a viewer in the midst of love unfolding,
tears pool, in the corner of my eyes.
If this is true love, life in all it’s conformities is a crime against humanity.
As the train rumbles
across paved track, I hear the crashing of steel and iron.
Speak shall I.
Is the train going fast, I ask the tourist?
“Yes it does feel fast! ”
“But I guess if you have some place to be it doesn’t.”
Exactly, I say: That’s the theory of relativity.
As the boy’s lips pulls away from his heart’s attraction,
“I love you”, ” I love you”, was his word,
conveyed to me by the quicksilver of the moment.
As a baby in the stroller yells: Wow!
Ooooo!
The train slows down and the conductor comes on over the loud speaker. “Sorry we have to switch operators!”
So if you’re in a hurry and have to get home, call your loved ones and tell them don’t wait up.
© 2017 Brad Baymon
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Brad Baymon: Resident of Beaverton, from Chicago. I’m a poet, writer of fantastic realism. Aspiring author, playwright, and director of the avant garde. I’m writing a series of fantastic realism short stories, similar to the one that won this Mini Sledgehammer. Lover of life, complex thinker, avid wanderer. And a kindred spirit immersed in the world.
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Sledgehammer Writing Contest 