Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

Title: Find the Velocity
By: CP Cabaniss

Numbers and equations,
all spread out on a page
Find the velocity and acceleration
No calculators, please
First and second derivative
Wait, do I multiply or divide?

I'm really getting flustered
There's a tangent function here
Is that secant squared...
...secant tangent...
or something else completely?

Everyone else is leaving
The test is almost done
But I'm still stuck on page one
Find the velocity and acceleration...
Who knew Calculus was such a chore?

Suicide by Train

By Gashbeen

In my direction
The train moves at a
High velocity.

Title : Speed
Poet : Edward Davies

Faster than the speed of light
More nimble than you think
Fleeting like a precious moment
Quicker than a blink
Instantly reaching conclusions
Land before we send
Hurried, flying through the ether
Rushing to the end

F = Gm1m2 / r2

‘It’s gravity, baby’,

that’s how it started:
three whispered words
under the bleachers,
two bodies
pulled into orbit.

From tongues of flame
halting caterwauls
breathlessly
stumbled
before cascading into long, thirsty nights
of lying thisclose, seeking new worlds
and unexplored places
beneath a peeping-tom moon.

There’s a point during free-fall
where you pause to consider
whether to brace
or just to surrender. –
for a heartbeat or two
you feel like you’re floating,
then the ground rushes up
to show you how endings
can sound like beginnings;

but that’s
just gravity,
baby.

~ R ~

Rushing Words

Quick is your wit,
Stable is your tongue,
You shall not be undone,
Nor get in a snit,

I am amazed with the velocity,
Of your words rattling off,
You don't stumble or scoff,
You speak with grand simplicity,

Your tempo is a fine cadence,
The pace you set.. a rapid rate,
Each sound does not hesitate,
It flows softly like a subtle fragrance.

Standing Still

The dewy grass was cold beneath her bare feet.
Golden corn whispered endearments
to dark, brooding trees.

Peach tendrils of dawn fluttered
like tattered flags welcoming
the steel grey morning.

Breathing the fresh, crisp ozone deep into her lungs,
the soft rhythm of her heart beat
slowed joining the tempo of the earth.

She felt as light and fleeting as a mountain side.
All around her the blurred neon lines of life spun past
at terrifyingly unattainable velocities.

Trapped by her own gravity;
a butterfly In a thunderstorm
desperate to find shelter from the pounding rain.

Untitled
J.F.

James wrote: "Untitled
J.F.

"

Woohoo! Nice! :-)

The Velocity of Thought
       by Guy Duperreault


My toe twitches and then my foot.
Soon I’m restless in this chair,
itching to move,
even though I know, now by experience,
that whatever it is I do cannot
will not
catch up with the velocity of my thoughts
spinning an out of control interlocked
and constricting web of synthetic thought-demons
so cleverly elegantly soothingly achingly disguised as truth.

Now my hands and fingers jitter
taking talking away from me and
even
the dream of the power of words to elucidate adumbrate
conflagrate
to conform the speed of thoughts to tangible black and white
through fingers in control of the brakes to truth.
Of truth.

I’m sure someone sees me,
sees me moving, moving even at the speed of thought
faster than light.
That thought leaves so quickly that I wonder if it even happened.
How are thoughts real, they are not real, but then
why is my body starting to race towards the
thought-vortex!?
Velocity, it’s not just a thing of physics!
It’s not just a science thing,
because it is a living thing
spinning
us
so quickly that we do not hear it laughing at
us.

You are welcome and thank you for organizing this. It is a great idea!

Looks great, Al! Congratulations to all of the chosen authors - an excellent edition :)