Sunday, October 7, 2018

Children's Rhyme - Free verse


The River Story
Deep in the jungle,
Dark from above,
Beneath branches, beneath leaves,
Beneath low hanging mangrove trees.

Two children adrift,
On a river that twist;
Banking left, banking right,
Banking near, far, out of sight.

Over tumultuous swells,
Full of piranha,
Stuck in this sweltering,
Natural sauna.

Escaping a humid world of insects,
Becomes the pair’s only interest.

Fluttering in the air,
Getting caught in their hair,
Exotic looking bugs,
Brightly jeweled, buzzing,
Landing for hugs.

This maze of lagoons,
Hiding enormous baboons,
Behind plants stretching to the sky;
Humid, wet, and no place dry.

Rustling behind the undergrowth quiet,
Suddenly erupts, into an excited riot:
Of chanting and screaming,
Of horns and drums,
Of savage creatures,
Hungry for fun.

Arrows are sent flying,
Spears sent soaring,
Children duck for cover,
But now, fear something other.

In the commotion the pair catch a glimpse,
Of something not quite so innocent.

Menacing fins piercing their wake,
Forcing feelings they couldn’t shake:
Of lying in wait,
Of being the bait,
For something they did not wish:
A Leviathan fish.

Only an outline can be seen,
Of this beast in the stream;
If not for its tail,
Making a SWISH,
Revealing this,
Leviathan fish.

Rushing water torrents ahead,
Echoing a looming dread:
A massive waterfall,
Ten stories tall,
Swallows the kids, the raft, the fish,
Swallows them all.

At the bottom of the falls,
Among the many rocks,
They disappear in the waves;
Perhaps their watery graves.

Splintered and battered,
Broken and shattered,
The boat,
A thousand pieces in this sea,
With two little kids,
Clinging to debris.

Big sister, little brother,
Drifting with the wreckage,
Their small bodies,
Tossed, broken,
Floating like the wreckage.

So small and frail they are,
The monster fish cannot see,
For from below the pieces of wood,
Float as still as the children could.

So the enormous mouth swam by,
Beneath the child’s thigh; 
For now the two are safe, 
Lying on pieces of their seat,
From that boat,
They perchance did greet.

Crumpled, hurt, alone,
Drifting far from home,
The siblings recall their affair,
Of simply falling through thin air.

What first appeared as a fern,
Exotic and stern,
Gave way to this jungle,
Which the two fell into, with a tumble.

 Rolling down a steep hill,
To a beach lined with trees;
The opening to this world,
Hides among the leaves.

As the sun sets,
And everything glows orange,
There flies by something, 
Something absurd:
A rainbow colored bird.

Perhaps it is good luck,
To see this painted duck,
For it did give them something pretty,
To ease their minds from this gritty,
Damp and miserable,
Night in the water.

All night there are howls,
From animals in the dark,
Cries to the moon:
Monkeys, leopards, wild buffoons.

Waking in the surf,
The two kids washed to land, 
Dazed and confused,
With their hands full of sand.

But, all they could do is wish,
As there began a hiss,
For the safety of their boat;
So they could simply be afloat.

Instead they run for their lives,
As snakes and alligators,
Snap at their behinds.

Their shrieks cause a ruckus.
Figures begin to emerge,
Shaggy hunters running,
Sprinting, in a wild raging surge.
 
From the tree-line they appear,
Brandishing their spears, 
And sprinting toward the children, 
Now stricken with fear.

The two scramble for cover, 
Bounding over a log,
Running quickly,
Toward the dense jungle fog.

Savages upon them,
Close enough to smell:
Body odor and sweat,
Musty with neglect.

A terrible growl comes from the thicket,
Just as the children make it past,
The spotted fur stops the wild-men,
Nearly dead in their tracks.

The pair wouldn’t dare,
To think of anything that could scare,
More than a leopard on their tracks;
Perhaps, leopards in packs?

Then they saw plants,
Larger than them,
With huge sharp teeth,
Sprouting everywhere but the stem.

The two are afraid,
Of this hungry wild,
Trying to take a bite,
And make a meal of a lost child.

While they scramble up the hill,
Running past a troop of ants,
The kids hear something familiar,
A sound that couldn’t be by chance:

Some faint barking on the trail,
Something little with a wagging tale.

Bounding towards them, 
Fast as light,
Their dog Jojo,
Jumps, jumps with all her might.

Hugs and kisses don’t last long,
The hungry wild coming along:
Leopards, wild-men, and a giant fish,
Tearing through the jungle, 
Looking for their dinner dish.

The little dog leads the way:
Off the beaten path,
Deeper, deeper into disarray.

They could feel them getting closer,
The large hunting party on their tail:
Hooting and hollering,
Growling and tracking:
Their empty stomachs’ casting spell.

Even the enormous fish,
Flails through the trees,
Whipping his mighty tale, 
With a loud cracking SWISH.

The frightened pair runs with their dog;
Climbing hills,
In this dense jungle bog.

With excited barks they know they are near,
To that place which their dog,
Leaped in to find them here.

The funny bush looks like a fern,
The same that they fell through,
The two indeed would soon learn.

As Jojo jumps between the leaves, 
And the two are left behind,
They quickly scramble through,
Right in the nick of time. 

Out they pop,
To the other side,
Sitting with their dog,
On a normal curbside.

The two did agree,
That they would never tell, 
Of that jungle sea,
Into which they fell.

But along came mom,
And the two sang their song.

Anthony Farentino
Tonyfsketches©


Thursday, September 6, 2018

Daily Routine


Daily Routine
By: Anthony Farentino

Traffic, work, headache; red lights, radio, traffic . . . Phone calls, emails, memos, reports, meetings. Driving, parking, sitting, waiting.
Another day, another routine.
Waiting for that moment; pulling the car down the street, tires easing up the drive-way . . .
Home. Finally. Home.
Stress melting, tension reseeding, dinner calling.
Car alarm beep; keys rattle; door unlocks.
Step in, light on . . . trash.
Trash everywhere.
Used napkins, messy plates, old food, all scattered helter skelter across the living room, perhaps the dining room; the kitchen for-sure. A tornado of mess tears through the house while you’re away.
Peeking out of shredded tissues, behind chewed paper-towel rolls, over crumpled bags full of crumbs, are: two small ears, a wet nose, and one guilty little face. 
Someone doesn’t like your routine either. 

©Tonyfsketches

An Artist's Sketch


An Artist’s Sketch
By: Anthony Farentino

A sketchbook is filled with countless masterpieces—fragments of a limitless mind. Great works of art begin this humble way, softly scribbled onto a blank surface—a blank canvas transforming beneath purposeful fingertips, bringing something new into this world.
Control over this new life is only an illusion as things that are meant to be form upon their own. A watchful eye guides the darkening across the plane—keen on every detail pressed from that measured life of a pencil; instruments conducting a symphony of thought.
There is but a limit to art, materializing and disappearing with the artist, only to remain as a temporary mark upon life; same as all things.
A parent’s love will only guide so far as children grow beyond their control, with time dictating the course of life’s flow. So too is the birth of art. A creation will surpass the creator and carry forward pieces of the past.
Never the image imagined, never precise, never perfect, art breathes life into itself. Elusively dancing across the page, molding itself through every stroke of the pencil, flick of the pen, the emotion traps itself over time.
Wisdom is the great eraser of life’s mistakes as both life and art emerge as much from the birth of new as the loss of old. This process is not pretty, nor is the process of creating art, for both love and pain are necessary ingredients. 
Life should be viewed in the manner of art, as an image creating itself over time, indifferent to the will of any higher power, and as unique as a simple stroke of the pen. A culmination of points formed through time creates something unpredictable, something beautiful, and is the art of life.           

©Tonyfsketches

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Excerpt from "Enigma"







Part 9

            The lady takes us to a closed door on the second floor, at the end of the house, overlooking a patio. Only the Doctor and I enter while the distraught looking housekeeper retreats downstairs. I am not prepared for the sight I see.
            Doctor Okur is the first to step into the room. As I step beside him the scene comes into full view. The double pane window is open, overlooking both the back yard and the great stretch of tree-line in the distance. The light is dim at this early hour, with the open window facing Westward. Dr. Okur switches on the overhead light, illuminating the scene.
            A desk, piled with papers, sits against the window sill: blood splattered. Red gore sprayed across the room, dripping from the ceiling, the light, over the desk full of papers, splashed on all four walls of the office. The carpet is soaked. 
            The corpse of the man lay supine in the center of the room, facing the ceiling, with a contorted expression of death forced upon his face.
            His eyes are still open. The entrails of Mr. Marouko are missing, mostly. Some of his intestines have been strewn about the room with the rest of the gore, but for the most part have been eaten, along with the majority of his vital organs. Even the heart is missing from the rib-cage.
            Flies buzz in the small office, swarming the raw meat on the floor. The legs, arms, skull, all have long rips in the flesh.
            “Sometimes,” Dr. Okur begins to speak, more out of discomfort rather than to address me. “Sometimes you have to wear many hats in this profession. Today . . . today we are investigators.” He finishes his remarks without taking his eyes off of the dead.  
            I begin scanning the room as a reaction to the word ‘investigator.’ I hadn’t noticed the complete destruction, only the carnage. Picture frames are shattered; ornaments on the wall have fallen; a standing mirror is broken and the two of us are standing on the broken bits. I hadn’t noticed.
            A large section of plaster broke off from one of the walls, with a large crack fissuring from the place of impact, about mid-height. Something else screams at me from the disarray: claw marks. Claws have scratched the carpet, leaving long trails of torn rug. A few spots on the walls have similar long streaks. I’ve never seen such huge scratches, like a bear marking a tree. And fur everywhere. Clumps of brown curls lay matted in blood while the deceased himself is found with tufts of hair in both hands.
            “What the hell happened?” I couldn’t, nay still can’t, find words to describe the horror, the animalistic ferocity, of what I saw. It is terrifying.
            Dr. Okur is too occupied in taking photos with his digital camera to acknowledge me. I don’t even think he hears me in such a chaotic room.
            “Help me flip the body” is his only response.
            I grab a hold of the legs while the Doctor grabs a hold of the shoulders; with one quick heave we turn the body over. I can see clear through the abdomen, to the man’s spine, as we flip his carcass. The floor underneath this poor soul is stained in blood. I later find out there is something peculiar about this body which I failed to notice. Having lived in Africa for several years, and practicing medicine in the bush, Dr. Okur is familiar with animal attacks. He did not seem as interested in the overall mess as I had, since he has seen several incidents of big cats trapped in a bedroom. What is most peculiar to the Doctor about this scene, about this animal attack, is the lack of puncture marks. What the Doctor later explains to me is the fact that he isn’t too mystified by the lack of bite marks or puncture wounds on the body, per say, but specifically puncture wounds to the neck.
            “You see, big cats kill with a single bite. They attack the throat, try to sever the spinal cord.” Dr. Okur explains to me. “Hyenas will eat their prey alive, from any piece that comes off in their mouth: like land sharks . . .  The little girl didn’t have bite marks either, but her throat was ripped out—perhaps in the nature of big cat predation.” He shifts uneasily in his seat, bowing his head for the rest of his remark. “But what is so peculiar about this case is the lack of a puncture wound to the neck. Mr. Maroukou was alive during the struggle.”
            “What are we dealing with?”
            The Doctor’s response is low and grave. “A man-eater.”



Anthony Farentino

                                                                                                                     ©Tonyfsketches