Week one of spn_napowrimo - Theme of the week is Two-lane Blacktop (places and Americana)

Title: Highway 12
Partner: None
Prompt: midnight on the interstate
Rating: Gen/PG
Character/Pairings: Sam and Dean
Tags/Warnings/Spoilers: Show level violence

Belated Acknowledgements: Many thanks to tifaching and quickreaver for helping me polish this! It was rough and ready before they stepped in. Love you both!
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Highway 12

That it’s dark goes without saying.
It is midnight, after all.
The desert holds the silence like breath, refusing to exhale.

“It’s colder than a witches tit,”
Dean complains, slams metal on metal carelessly loud.

Pinyon pines rustle an uneasy reply.

Sam hefts the shotgun, lets Dean shoulder the rest of the burden
 – like Sam has a choice.
Sam’s worry is wasted with only starlight there to see it.

They leave the Impala on blacker than blacktop, step off the highway
Onto earth red by day, old-blood-dark by night.
Nothing ominous about that, no sir.

Sam doesn’t think about portents when he carries his brother back
Torn open.
Dripping blood steams – human heat versus desert chill.
The desert is winning.

Waiting patiently, blacker than black,
blacker than blacktop,
cold iron will be their saviour.

The Impala roars deliverance into the Utah night.



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Check out the community - all poems and poets are welcome!

For Rachel

Stones

My friend, she was my best,
Has stones in her head;
Tumours that grew in spite of the knife,
Untimely, uninvited, malicious.
Wrong.

I want to be cremated, she says,
Make things easy.
No headstone, she says.
Carrying them round is enough.

So, I wrote a poem for spnapo.

1. (April Fools’ Day) “I don’t like poetry. Put up or shut up.” -Meg (demon 2.0), “Reading is Fundamental.”

I don’t like poetry, Meg says.

A poem, she says, has too many tangents.
It twists words looking for rhymes,
Tries too hard to be—plangent.
Like church bells.

Poetry reminds her of clamouring priests
in churches full of hate for her kind.
Women, witches, a hate-feast
Of bitter fools.

Cas says, in the beginning was the Word
Yeah, and they said the Word was God, she scoffs
So put up or shut up

Laughable lovers write poems, Meg points out.
She can’t afford to believe in love,
It’s not what Hell’s about.
Unlike Castiel.

I wield words as weapons, Meg says.

There’s a kind of poetry in that, Cas thinks.

Well it's already tomorrow in Kerala, so I reckon it is not too early to call this 26th April!
A little birthday gift to one of my favourite, most imaginative ficwriters and lovely girl indiachick - inspired by the beautiful poem Tell it Like it is.
Hope you have a totally spectaculacular birthday!
Preview (the drawing with contrast adjusted and a few minor fiddles in photoshop)


( Large colour version under the cut )

So yesterday was National Poetry Day, and me and my friend Ana were talking about Siegfried Sassoon.  This poem of his is one of my favourites, and so here it is, a day late.

                                                     

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on – on and out of sight

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away…O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

April 1919 Siegfried Sassoon

So yesterday was National Poetry Day, and me and my friend Ana were talking about Siegfried Sassoon.  This poem of his is one of my favourites, and so here it is, a day late.

                                                     

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on – on and out of sight

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away…O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

April 1919 Siegfried Sassoon

1914
 
War broke: and now the Winter of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,
Is over all the width of Europe whirled,
Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled
Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.
The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.
 
For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,
And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need
Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.
 
Wilfred Owen

In celebration of International Poetry month - an excuse to post some of my fave poems, starting with this one by Laurie Lee.  Thanks to Smilla for the heads up!

The Long War

 

Less passionate the long war throws

Its burning thorn about all men,

Caught in one grief, we share one wound,

And cry one dialect of pain.

 

We have forgot who fired the house,

Whose easy mischief spilt first blood,

Under one raging roof we lie

The fault no longer understood.

 

But as our twisted arms embrace

The desert where our cities stood,

Death’s family likeness in each face

Must show, at last, our brotherhood.

 

Laurie Lee