The Subterranean Cheese Infestation

Ah, dare you enter?

Beware young one
Beyond these holey walls
Lies a world filled with
Unexpected flavors,
Melodramatic resonance,
Broken cadence
And flourishing fantasy.

For what the cheese knows
It knows with finality.
Let not his secret
Render you insatiable
For his whims
Can drive to madness,
Divine, sweet madness.

But within that madness
Waits a world divine
A place of ripe wonder
Where occupants languish
And pine
And dream
For the respite of sunlight.

Then brave adventurer
Will you enter?
Will you pledge your all
To the silence
Of the underground
Where only the courageous
Survive?


It's been a while since I engaged in drabble poetry--but I do so to introduce...

*drum roll*

The Underground

For a year now I've been working to figure out what I love about blogging and why I should continue. It takes so much time, but I love the friendships. I love the interaction. I love being able to put something out there and hear a response. Tal's Underground is the embodiment of all I love about blogging. It's a place for readers, a place to be entertained, and a place to engage in riotous amounts of cheese. The gates are officially open, and dependent on how quickly it fills up, they may close shortly. This is a place for Middle Grade and Young Adult writers/readers (genre, not necessarily age). Come, and bring your quirkiness with you.

I'll be contributing sporadically at first, as time permits, but in the coming months it will probably become my favorite place to hang, along with all the fictional friends in my head. I need a place to splash their witty banter and freakish fits. The only rule, should you choose to enter, is that you come with wide eyes and an open imagination. Oh, and beware of the gatekeeper. She burbs flame.

How and where do you capture the voices in your head? 

SHORT: Contest Challenge

S uccinct 

H ook

O f

R apid

T hought

Ideal panel look-alikes

We see it in film all the time, a brief snippet encompassing a complete story. We also see it in poetry. Within a newer art, we find it in flash fiction, and the even more condensed "drabbles". As a slow creature to modern crazes, I've decided to finally try my hand at 100 word perfection. (--In a conglomeration of  poetic drabble-dom.) Join me. Create your own. Add a comment with a link back to your blog, then post your literary masterpiece in your own space. (Or add it as a comment here if you don't have a blog.) A unique panel of 5 judges will pick the best of the best and award (drum-roll) the Drabble Poet badge (for your blog/webpage etc) AND a whopping $5 gift card to Amazon! I know, you can't believe it, right? Five Dollars!! Contest ends September 1st.


Let the Drabble-Poets commence!

Dizzily dancing, she twirled the stage. 
One pirouette, two pirouette, finish with a bow.
Then up she came for the crowd's laud
Greeted by streetlight and graffiti-ed walls. 

Stood lone ballerina, all conundrum and dread
Studio behind, home of the arts, an infamous wreck.

Out stepped a stranger with ominous look.
"I've longed to see thee, lady fair of the stage."
"I've longed to see what I can't, for my age."
 He offered a hand, strange contraption therein.

"This be the means of thy travel. I fear 
Ye never shall return to the then from the here.

You are mine."