WC010324: Hobbies I used to enjoy.

 

Starting the new year off for the Wednesday Challenge. Hobbies I used to enjoy.

1. Model airplanes and cars. It was fun gluing the pieces together and painting them. The last one I did, was in high school, 1971. AFJROTC we all brought an airplane, and they were hung from the drop ceiling of the room. I did the Concorde SST. 

2. Collecting and reading comic books. Mom would give my brother and me two quarters and we would go to the Rexall drug store a few blocks away and that would buy us 4 comic books. Good for a couple of weeks until the new ones came out. We had original Fantastic Four, X-Men, The Hulk, Spider Man, Silver Surfer and others. Our closet was crammed full of them. We were millionaires until Mom threw them all away.

3. Paint by numbers. Something Mom got us to keep us busy during the cold months. 

4. Writing poetry. I was rather moody growing up and I would write poetry. I never showed them to anyone as they were more my way of journaling my feelings. The last serious poem I wrote was going through my first wife's near fatal illness and then divorce. I've been sneaking that poem into a science fiction story for the last thirty years. It's still a work in progress, but it's getting there. This is the poem; the story is about a planet invaded by space travelers and in a hundred years totally destroyed. This was one of my ways of dealing with a deep depression.

BTW I am looking for some beta readers on this story in any are interested.

Buzi

I shiver huddled in a lonely cave.

I shout, I rant, I rave.

The game of life has been played.

Though I don’t know how I strayed.

The ache within my chest

Will give me no peaceful rest.

Oh Buzi

 Oh Buzi

 OHHHH BBUUUUUUZZZZZIII!

(silence)

 I hurt.

I am Niqmiepu of the tiller Grails.

We tilled the soil with the ivory in our tails.

We sowed the ground in a single pass.

Now all around me is not a single blade of grass.

Hunters from the sky came to kill,

and we didn’t know why.

They traded with the Prails.

And allied with the Drails.

They slaughtered us, Grails.

 

It was the ivory they sought,

Too late we vainly fought.

With all the farmers killed

None of the land was tilled.

As fallow our soil does lie.

The Prails and Drails now die.

 Finally, there was only Ishme.

and me.

We hurriedly fled.

Our feet sorely bled.

We rested by a tree.

There was no one we could see.

Ishme, my wife was hurt.

And her face was covered in dirt.

We holed up in this cave.

Where for water we began to crave.

She grew thin as a rail.

And as white as her tail.

While in a fever I perspired

Ishme’s breath gradually expired.

Panting on her side she did lie.

Slowly I watched her die.

 

I buried her with dust and tears.

She was the last of my peers.

 Come sweet death.

Take my lonely breath.

My race is lost.

At tremendous cost

My tail I kept.

My eyes have wept.

For those who died

And for those who tried

To save my race

Now there is no place.

For us to live

And no love for me to give.

Come sweet death.

Take my lonely breath.