Monosyllabic Challenge
Three Kitty Cats in the Window, Rock Texture, Syllable Text, by Crystal A Murray, All Rights Reserved
Click image to open a new tab/window to view my cats and critters album at Flickr.
Monosyllabic is a five-syllable word that defines words of one syllable. Only in the English language, right? But, if you’re like me and like rhythmic poetry like haiku, you might count syllables in words just for fun. For example, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has 14 syllables, even if it is a made-up word. If you want a real word, there is a word for a lung disease that has 19 syllables, but I’ll let you do that research for yourselves. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, in the urban dictionary, monosyllabic is actually a word that means “lame” or “boring.”
In an effort to keep this post from being lame, I’m going to challenge readers to write a monosyllabic piece. In other words, create a paragraph or story made up of only one-syllable words. You can keep it to yourself, or you can share it in comments for me to read. I prefer the latter. Just to make it fair, I will share a quick one-syllable story, and this one even includes a cat just to match the image above. Here goes…
High noon, when the sun sits at the top of the sky, is too hot to work, but there is so much work to be done. But how can I work when life will not yield its strength to me. I need strength. I need hope. I feel the pain of my loss as it digs a hole in my heart. It makes me weak. I am bound by it, and I can’t do a thing to make it set me free. It haunts me. It taunts me with its knock, knock, knock at my brain.
I watch the cat curl up in a warm spot of sun on the floor, and I wish I were a cat. Not that cat’s lives are filled with ease. I know they are not when I watch them sleep and dream of that cat and mouse chase where they may win or they may lose. But when one has just sensed a great loss, it makes me think it would suit me more to just lie down and sleep.
There are dreams I would like to keep in the depths of my heart, and there are dreams I would like to share. But gone are the dreams I think could come true for me since my new dream is now gone. And it would have worked so well. But, like the cat and mouse game, the thought was there when I went to sleep, but when I woke up, it was gone. So it seems best now to lie in the sun and take a nap like the cat does each day at noon. It could be that as I sleep, my dreams will wake in me once more.
In case you don’t get the hidden subject, I don’t want to leave you thinking this is a negative story. It’s just about those ideas that you think about when you lie down to sleep, or dreams you have in the middle of the night. You are so sure you will remember the idea or dream, so you don’t write it down. And then, when you wake up, it’s all gone. You then hope that it will come back to you the next time you sleep. If it doesn’t, you write a story about it just to have something to feed your muse. 🙂
Now it’s your turn, and I hope you share.
Three Wandering Kings–A Fun Story with Christmas Carols and Songs
Merry Christmas, Everyone. Here’s a fun story as my gift to all of you. I wrote it as a challenge for our local writer’s group. I’ve also included it as an attachment at the end in case anyone would like to download and/or print it. Enjoy…
THREE WANDERING KINGS
(by Crystal A Murray)
We three kings knew we had a long journey ahead. We started on a silent night, but it turned out that many joined us along the way. We happened upon Good King Wenceslas, who asked us where we were going. Since we weren’t exactly sure yet (at this point we were just following the yonder star), I just hem-hawed around and finally answered, “Oh…little town of Bethlehem, I reckon.”
We continued on down the road when one of our road mates stopped and said, “Do you hear what I hear?“
I answered, “Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel; tell us what you heard.”
And then Melchior spoke up and said, “I didn’t hear anything, but I saw three ships come sailing in as we passed the harbor.”
“If you already saw the ships,” I said, “then it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
“Well then,” said Melchior, “go tell it on the mountain, so everyone will know!”
“But who will tell Grandma?” asked one of our younger travelers.
“We will,” announced a group of teens who had joined us. As they ran out of sight, I heard them singing what sounded like, Hi ho, hi ho, to Grandmother’s house we go. It reminded me so much of my childhood that I could practically see our old homestead decked out with the holly and the ivy, and I could smell the chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Oh those memories of days spent rockin’ around the Christmas tree were so wonderful. I hate that it all had to end when Grandma got run over by a reindeer.
I was almost crying when someone broke into my thoughts. “I think I just heard the silver bells.”
“You mean you heard dinner bells,” I joked because I knew we were all starting to get hungry. Never-the-less, we trudged along until it dawned on us–well, it wasn’t morning yet, so no dawn, but it came upon the midnight clear that the star was leading us to a barn in the middle of a field.
As we approached the barn, someone shouted, “Bring a torch, Jeanette Isabella,” and we all sprang forward to view the baby who had been tucked away in a manger. At that, the little drummer boy who was traveling with us began to play a special tune that sounded more like sleigh bells or jingle bells than a drum. (I don’t know how he did that.) Anyway, it was magical and made me wonder, what child is this that can turn even the sound from a child’s toy into such beautiful orchestration. And that’s when I heard the bells on Christmas day, and then we all exclaimed together, “Oh holy night!” Continue reading
My Latest Flickr Photos
Crystal Writes A Blog 