Entries, Featured, Peggy Dobbs 1 entries, Peggy Dobbs 1 finalists
Princess Kismet of my thousand starships.
Dec
(another horny intern to deal with at the towers that are A Word with You Press)
Good evening.
A little late posting the final two stories. Spent the day in court, but as Jean Rodenbough so frustrated us in one her contest entries “…but that’s another story.”
There are but two stories to post as finalists in The First Annual Peggy Dobbs’ Write-of-Passage Contest.
This is one of them. I am consistently declining to name the author…keep you guessing.
Here is
Princess Kismet of my Thousand Starships
by Contestant # 6
Princess Kismet ascended, melting my eyes with hers, transfixing my every inner cell to whirling landing lights of a flying saucer’s landing. Her gentleman, shoulder strong, tippy-toe tall, gently handsome and huggably diplomatic evaporated as did my best friend along with this Earth. For Kismet is quantum mechanical insobriety, quark charmed cat gliding through my skinned walls, laser blissed parallel universe of milk and honey purrs, tractor-beaming love.
“I’m Princess Kismet, Beautiful. Hug?”
This enchanting jet pilot turned chemist then physics PHD so fully in my arms, her pale, petite, transparent soul, so feminine that I imagined myself, futuristic Menelaus embracing his 22nd century Helen of Troy whose beauty could launch my thousand starships to the edge of our known universe.
Her words danced through my thick branched sexual vastness expanding and contracting my reborn soul. Others spoke rational thoughts, but what did they matter? My juxtaposition within her escape horizon gravity’s tolling she is half your age; while her demisexual intellect, claimed affections beyond age, body and orientation in-between my poetry read aloud.
First evening became first night of a false parting, wired as Borg, offering no resistance. My mind being so hardwired to her joyous explorations of space beyond that sleep seemed futile. Each dream becoming Kismet. Each awakening crying her glorious name out loud.
Poetry, written intimacies, requiems to star fated launchings. Her Princess lips on mine awakened me, her Sleeping Beauty. Our beginning kiss labeled taboo, but by then, it was too late.
Jealous of the way you used the prompt, Claudia. Intelligent, master minded, techy. Must get that from DL eh? Best of luck.
Thank again Michael dear. This story is mine. By the way, as a fan of the British original series, “The Prisioner” from the black & white days, I have to add, having been labeled #6, “I am a person not a number.”
And let there be life, God said, as he bent to kiss his creative horizon.
Lovely words Michael. Nicki Manaj’s are, “Starships were meant to fly, hands up and touch the sky.”
Lookin’ good Nicki…”let’s go…let’s go…I need a mothership.”
Very curious as to why you thought this was me. Please share! I wonder if PM would also like to know what writing quirks we share.
Gotta tell ya, Chuckerson, there is not a drop of anything even close to you in this story. I have been playing roulette with the finalist’s names (love that edit button) but stopped making a mess out of myself before I got back to this story. The truth is I think you are behind door number one
Trying to make sense of these exchanges is as difficult as trying to understand the Nicki Manaj – Mariah Carey cat fights on American Idol.
Ah, missed that one but I know what you mean
So what do you teach Michael at the college or university you work at? I teach the absurdities of life in living peacock colours because the votes N(eed2) B(e) C(ounted), yo!!! Word!!! Just sayin’ before we are all bunkin’ with Sylvia P with the gas unlit…and the letter please…
Looked up your architecture, construction site…quite creative and interesting…I’m very impressed by the work you do for your day job.
I am as well, because unless I am missing the point of this name change, game playing, you weren’t in the finals. I’m a relative new comer to this Funhouse of less than Pink. I would like to remind all of you that a “charmed quark” is a bit of a “quirk”, but makes perfect sense in quantum mechanical physics atom particle collisions. But any of you do wish to continue this collision of quirky words beyond this contest, you will find me as Parisianne Modert, my real name, on FaceBook. Send me a friend request.
Funhouse by Pink…highly recommended…is that a unicorn horn she is holding onto? Freakin’ yow!!!
Chuck is very much in the finals as a finalist. You may recognize her as Claudia.
I didn’t at the time, but do now. I’ll remind you Michael that this is only my second contest, so I am not privy to the contests before the last one in which I also was a finalist. I also have noticed that my short term memory having arrived at age 61 is not what it sue to be. On another open window, I see Thorn’s comment of “Am I alone among you who have missed Chuck? (aka Claudia Barillas). I didn’t remember that line until looking it up today following her remarks to me and yours. I apologize for the oversight, but my memory isn’t what it use to be. I wish both of you good fortune in the finals.
Considering I responded to every comment on got on my first-round entries, including yours, I’m a bit hurt that you don’t know who I am. Then again I’m also a bit hurt by how you slammed the other final round entries in your voting commentary. Chuck Chuckerson is an internet handle I use to post comments on blogs. It used to just be “Chuck” which was my nickname in high school, but I added the “Chuckerson” to emphasize that it was not my real name.
i reread my finalist comments and believe I didn’t “slam” anyone. Let’s also add that to my knowledge I have never met you before, but correct me if I am wrong. Using another name to comment would always confuse me, because I am not that person. I have been tempted to try a pen name on my novels if they are ever published, but haven’t so far.
Now looking back by rereading your comments, I get the connection, but I reviewed close to 70 stories while writing and submitting three first round and one halloween poem. I also deal with crisis with my brother on a daily basis which occupies much of my time. I put a lot of work in these critiques while paying far more attention to the stories than any one author. I believe you will find that I drew praise from this editor for my comments in fact. Oddly, the comments allowed my choice as a finalist as much if not more than my stories.
I found four of the finalist stories well written, but depressing (Contestants 1,2,3,5), one story a memorial worthy of both mourning and mild celebration (Contestant #7), one story triumphantly feminine folk lore victory over adversity (Contestant #4) and my own a romantic, sensual, sexual rebirth to life’s main purpose which is true love in my opinion.
My discernment is influenced by the fact that I mourned for eight years from 2004-2012 over the loss of my partner in life and was depressive from 1964-mid 2013. I am sick of being down, joyous to be alive and celebrating life again. Many writers on this site have brought very down mood stories during this contest which I have read, but not enjoyed. There is a difference between reading what one would choose to read for enjoyment and what one critiques. As I reader if I don’t like a story, I stop reading, but as a reviewer I read it to the end. I believe in both quality of writing and content are important in critique.
Now let me be honest. In the first round of three stories, I praised “I could be Mulder if Muldr liked Dudes”, as “well written”. “The storyline flow(s) off and around the tongue like a hunger that is to be satisfied without apology.”, “held my interest and intrigue” and “vivid candor, flowing”
“Swailing” I called “powerful, because the confusion and drama”, “very effective”. You thanked me for my comments.
“Endless” I praised with “slow motion of sad surreal longings of hidden emotions” Of your three stories this was the one I could both relate to and thought was your best by far.
With that being said, I thought out of the approximately 36 writers in the contest that the six I would have chosen didn’t include you. If I had listed my top 10, I would have included you in my list.
On the other finalist entries I tried to say what I did like about them. As a reader I loved “Mother Song” from Contestant #4 and believed in my own or I wouldn’t have written it. As artist we write to a segment of readers and for ourselves. It isn’t my responsibility to like everything I read or review them kindly. My responsibility is to be honest as to my critiques which I believe I have been.
I am not, repeat not a fan of the method used to pick finalists. I placed myself fifth in the first round and this editor admitted that he did not place me in the top three, but could have so my placement and his were very close to each other. With that being stated and accepted, he also stated that I probably would not have been drawn which is true given the odds were about 11:1 (33 remaining with 3 slots). I felt awkward about being given a pass, but I don’t believe in ignoring such a free pass into the finals. I wrote prose as much lyrical poetry as story. I thought about submitting this story as a poem, but wanted to honor the format. I’ll add that I didn’t like the game of contestant numbers. I’m a mid-western woman who puts her name, upfront on her own work. I’m a woman who seems to skip sixty year periods with two exceptions with the first being in Elizabethian times with the shift happening in 1680. Thus 1600, 1660, 1680, 1740, 1800, 1860, 1920, 1980 and one it seems in 2010 when i started writing seriously.
I am not modern for most part being most fond of the 19th century and not into blogs. I am who I am; although that is very complex and one of a kind. I am sorry you saw my critiques in the finals as “slammed”, but that is your opinion not mine. Actually I used restraint considering how I longed to read another story from Gary Clark, Kyle Katz and Caitlin Hornshaw. Each of these writers belonged in the finals to me, but weren’t included.
Final thought: I am glad that this contest will be over within hours. I wish each of the finalist contestants good fortune including you Claudia in the voting which seems reasonable as stated. I also wish to applaud all which entered stories, critiques and made this contest possible from A Word With You Press.
The unicorn is a very sacred young lady in the poly world of relationships. Her beauty, pureness of loving beyond the restrictions of mere mortals places her in popular thought as a mythical, non-existentant phenomenon, but I have news for you, because I confess I not only wrote this story, but I have an ongoing enchantment for such a lady (kiss pending). When I write, the content is the most important element to bring my truth to this troubled world. I am primarily a poet of alternative romantic sensibilities belonging more in a time since forgotten. Please consider Disney’s version of Sleeping Beauty above. That symbol of pure lady as character, thought deceased, is me. Without love she will die. I lost the love of my life to cancer in 2004 and have been a shell of a woman ever since.
The lover’s kiss is for me the most intimate of intimacies. Souls cannot hide from each other in a meaningful kiss of tender, open passion. I suggest that the power of that kiss can resurrect you one to blissed life once again. As a romantic, I dismiss cynics of true love. I believe this kiss, if it is to happen in the future, will be one of the most sacred moments of my entire life. The last lips i kissed were of my deceased love. Her lips were cold, unrequited in death and are remembered as both my farewell to her and my funeral inside for myself. My story finds love with a young woman less than half my age, but her kiss would still be a wedding kiss in spirit to me.
I deeply appreciate the video above capturing that beauty so nicely. With that being said, I presented a warp speed invasion of word usage on purpose to convey the overwhelming power of energy, imagination and grace this young lady has brought into my existence. To feel the launch of rebirth I feel I will ask you to view Nicki Manaj’s “Starships” before reviewing his work. I wish ever person could be as fortunate as I have become in meeting such a woman who is my real life Princess Kismet of My Thousand Starships.
Thank you for sharing all of your stories and critiques over the course of this contest. I did not enter this contest as much to show off my writing skills. I entered this contest to share my life and heart with all of you, because love and compassion are the truest reward. Thank you for allowing me this indulgence of my soul and by reading my stories about what love can truly be.
This kiss-in-waiting evokes lovely tippy-toe troubador’ian (yea, okay) tropes. It calls for playful pandering, and I submit that quite sincerely. So, I am listening to George Strait’s “Troubadour” as I write to you, and by golly if there aren’t some lyrics that seem to embrace this unicorn-love. Hold on.
I’m a George Strait fan, had the song already and played most of “Troubadour”. That isn’t close to what I was writing about. The tippy-toe tall gentleman I described is also very real and I have developed very strong feelings for him as well. Part of the reason I wrote this story Elizabeth is that the Polyfidelity community is very maligned with false assumptions of their dedication to committed love not needing to be limited to two people. Sometimes the relationships are straight (no pun intended about Mr. Strait), sometimes bi and sometimes gay or lesbian. I realized in writing this story that there are words such as “demisexual” which even articulate people will need to look up to understand this story. I write alternative romance stories not to make it simple for my readers to comprehend, but to expand the curious among us to realize a richer variety in how we as humans are capable of loving each other.
The gentleman I mention too briefly due to word limit is a magnificent man whom I have formed deep affection for along with the lady mentioned. In real life there is also another lady whom I am very fond of with strong admiration for her qualities as well. There is absolutely no pandering intended here what-so-ever. While very new to my life’s experience; I am a lady who weds in spirit for life as are they wish to. I am an advocate as of late for poly marriage which may shock many of you the most about me.
Final thought, because this is very important. I am not in love, because the lady mentioned can be labeled as a unicorn by the poly community. I am falling in love, because of the quality of the lady whom happens to be polyfidelitous. That is why the word “unicorn” was deliberately left out of the story. The picture was submitted to primarily to peak attention to a futuristic, other world feel. The word “unicorn” as used in the poly community is a label descriptive to describe a rare person, usually a young woman’s orientation style, not a form of love in action.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here, and guess that this story is by Parisianne Mode–oh!–wait!
Don’t say it, don’t say it…I did?
“Oops!…I did it again
I played with your heart(s), got lost in the game
Oh, baby, baby
Oops!…You think I’m in love
That I’m sent from above
I’m not that innocent”
“But to lose all my senses
That is so typically me
Baby, oh”
I am so a total Britney
“Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah”
My heart is full of Glee…
Click on top picture and blue line to see full pictures…please.
“Baby hit me one more time…
I believe in Britney unicorns with Glee…
I believe in eunochthorns
May be your best pun ever from those I have read, so congratulations, Mr. Edited-His-Front-Page-Chief. Your reaction Nicki Manaj?
“I’m not that innocent.”
I love the lyricism of your language, how you straddle between poetry and prose.
Thank you Kristy. My favorite discovery of this contest has been your writing. You started us off with a winner and may well be the decorated winner at the end of this contest. You were my favorite writer during the contest. Given this your praise means the world to me. I see people that I care for in poetic terms, think lyrically and attempt to translate my offbeat nature into prose as best I can.
If I had to describe you to another person I would say, Kristy to me is a “Bird’s nest of rich textures of nature’s beauty, full of inquisitive baby birds chanting wonder, begging due to hunger while listening to their mother tell them tales of the world that they will fly into soon.”
Wow, thank you Parisianne. This is a huge, huge compliment. Discovering you as both a writer and integral part of this on-line community is something I’m truly grateful for.
A great use of language – poetic and seductive.
Your kind and generous words honour this story, the lady, her gentleman and myself, because this usage of language is intended to speak of a love that is without jealousy, innocently pure, a poetic seduction of aura energies floating on wave peaks of lyrical descriptions of the most beautiful beginnings between the lady and myself.
Thank you for your insights Derek.
Original doesn’t even cover it. I’m riding on this Starship. passion and poetry, turning a sharp curve around Milky way’s sexual vastness? This story has certainly glided through my skin , stabbing its walls of lust. I guess I’m still waiting for my first kiss! I never knew Michael Stang had wriling landing lights. OUTSTANDING!
Thank you dear sister of my heart, but the Milky Way is too limiting and Michael, though a very talented writer and outstanding professor holds no landing rights when it comes to my emotions. I don’t believe I have ever met him in fact.
Vague confession time, so nobody needs to wig here on me; although if true love disturbs your peace of mind read no further. What I wish to share is not a fairy tale, but my soul’s truth.
I began this contest more in love than I have ever been in my life with a woman I love even more at this moment in time. I would marry her if I were the person right to allow her the fullest measure of happiness in her life, but I probably never could be as her wife. Love means wishing the person you love happiness on their terms, not your own. If your heart prefers your own happiness to theirs that is not true love in my opinion.
A month ago and two days at about this time, when I thought I would die someday holding this love in my heart forever unrequited and alone unitl my passing to the next existence, a miracle, so unpredictable, so taboo, so voiced of an energetic grace of innocent beauty, that I felt the purpose of life itself awaken, blinding my soul for 24 hours to only the young lady I wrote this story about.
When the Princess Kismet Effect started to wear off only in part, I realized that my love for the first woman of my heart remained with a glowing outer aura around my heart that belonged to Princess Kismet. A month has now passed since Princess Kismet surrounded my heart, with each meeting with her and the ones she loves being more dear and sweetly affectionate and spiritual. In that month I have fallen in love with this beautiful, intelligent woman of vision less than one half my age. She is more mature than I am, more intelligent than I am, but so is the other woman I love. I am humbled by few but kneel before both of them in reverent respect.
I am so blessed to know such love which is different in nuisances between these two women, but my heart is full, my body illuminated with transparency to both. Tonight I am a thousand starships with lights whirling, alive, flying, spinning through a universe which knows no limit to love. I write of true love, because this shell that traps my Earth body cannot imprison my Universal soul.
I am a winner in life having spent 30 years with a wife then partner I loved until her death in 2004 from cancer and always will and now after mourning for eight years have found a Gemini Spring of true love.
Well, not much fun in trying to guess the author of this one. Sigh.
Although, the rapid dialogue and stream-of-consciousness tangents had Parisianne as my first guess.
Where did I read this before? O, yes, right above from Mac Eagen. I wanted to add that there are real life qualities about the real life Princess Kismet which would have made her a candidate for astronaut training if she had chosen that path in life. Part of my outer space, futuristic words are meant to convey this impression of her from my mind’s discernment.
Final thought: I did play the game of guessing who is the writer for the first five and final contestant though I probably am incorrect In some or all of those guesses. I figured that whoever the judge or judge(s) are, they would be given only the stories to judge and not the comments that naturally follow. Sorry if I spoiled your fun on this story, but I think my writing style by now is so distinctively unconventional (Victorian Romance) and my voice content so fairy tale romantic that most would know I had written this story after reading it before considering the comments already placed.
Yes, the Disqus Delete Dilemma. I posted my comment, then realized I needed to edit it. But Disqus does not offer an “edit” option, only a “delete.” As soon as I deleted it, though, I remembered also that Disqus does not delete – it only removes the author’s name. I refreshed the page to confirm, but the comment did not show up. I thought, perhaps with the changes they have been making they are actually deleting comments now when requested. I refreshed the page several more times and the comment did not appear. I assumed it had actually been deleted.
Looks like I was wrong.
The blessings of social media in cyber space and the curse as ying and yang keyboards typing the key we did not intend. I adore dialogue in short stories in particular and moderated within novels. In novels, dialogue is a surprise filling within a chocolate to me. In a short story I like to skip the cover of chocolate. Therefore this short story violated my modus operandi writing style to a degree. Perhaps this is because, my mind for most of that night near Princess Kismet became tabula rasa. I could read my poetry, my verse to my guest, but thinking was so difficult. Each time my eyes met hers I melted into pure automic energy shooting particles to destroy my synapses. They say love is blind, but I would say love is becoming inseparable from the universe.
Well, not much fun in trying to guess the author of this one. Sigh.
Although, the rapid dialogue and narrative, and stream-of-consciousness tangents had Parisianne as my first guess.
What was shocking to me Mac was that I put one line of dialogue in at all. I tried several variations which eliminated that first hug at my front door, but I came to see that hug as a “we have ignition” moment between last second chances to shut down the rockets at “we are go for launch” and “we have lift off”. That hug began my journey into space with the kiss the awakening to orbital flight.
That was the edit I realized I needed to make after posting my comment (see additional details in my other reply) – that “dialogue” was not correct. Thinking I had deleted the first comment I reposted with “dialogue” replaced by “dialogue and narrative.”
My novels have a lot of lyrical, poetic narratives which have drawn much scorn in writing groups for being not modern, not to the immediate drama the instant, thrill seeker desires. I am best suited for an age of subtext from nature, impressions and drawn out courtships. Yet there is a notable craving in me for love at first sight. Princess Kismet in that first set of moments stretching hours from late evening to early night was more of a power plant energy so charged that first love feelings came to sobriety weeks later. Perhaps love was there at first glance for I can not disclaim the possibility, but then again love that is true is an enrichment of the soul not an indulgent impression.
Question: What is the meaning of three women kissing? – Answer: Love without limits – Four of more people kissing – Living Art in the Matrix…or in the next contest…stay tuned while I think of Fred & Ginger and being in Paris along the Seine. Romance is everywhere when the soul is engaged to wander freely.
Amazing talent.
Thank you Miryam. I am a fan of yours as well.
Mr. Stang, perhaps?
Not close to right. Read the comments below.
Parisianne, I rarely read comments left by others before posting as to not taint my own opinion of the story. I enjoy most stories here and the sometimes ribald exchanges tween peeps. I’m oblivious to any ‘game playing’ except that if there’s games to be played I want IN, dagnabbit. I use my own name when penning my stories too, glad we’re on the same page there. Lastly, I’m a story teller from way back; my stories are all ME told in my own unvarnished ME-ness. I’m easy to decipher, easy to interpret and hopefully, entertaining as all get out. That’s my aim. Most of the time I don’t have a prayer of a chance of winning these contests but hey, you never know, I was a finalist once. I guess that goes in the ‘even a blind chicken finds a piece of corn now and again’ category 🙂 .
Now, as Forrest once said, “That’s all I have to say about that.”
In voting (last second adjustment), I voted for my own story barely for first choice, because I honestly believe “Princess Kismet of a Thousand Starships” is the best original story in the finals and I voted for Contestant #4, “Mother Song” for my barely second place choice. In my view, none of the other five stories came close in quality and depth to either of my first two picks.
If I had to pick a third place it would have been, Contestant #5, “Looking for Love” which was much better than the remaining four stories to me. That’s my opinion. I encourage everyone to vote their conscience.
I wish to add that I would have liked to have read the final entry stories from Gary Clark, Kyle Katz and Caitlin Hornshaw who, in my opinion, all belonged in the finals.
I knew three words in that this was Madame Modert. I like the whirlygig feel of this story. Like an acid trip, but not really. Cool story!
Madame before Madame was Madame took such a trip once and only once in her first year of college. Nothing was working for me other than growing up from a naive, mid-west town hick to a city sophisticated in the hippy world. All my carefully plotted plans for my future were crumbling in the classrooms in Champaign-Urbana. I was destined to flunk out of a top engineering college and I knew this by then.
That “Mr. Tambourine Man” mixed with “Eight Miles High” ride while “Sargent Peppers” played was of pure idiocy in retrospect and nearly cost me my life. I had an actual out of body experience looking down at my slumped over body in a chair below. My pulse checked out later at about 170 which isn’t recommended. Yes, Madame, named Pete the frustrated virgin at the time, saw many unreal things in-between the peaks of that 10 hour insanity. It seems my prescription med and that 1/2 tab didn’t get along. If I had taken the full tab, I would have died that night.
So when you use the very nice phrase, “whirlygig” I get it, because that acid trip was very much all that and more. There was a point near the end where it felt like a thousand pins circled a part of my brain and attacked all at once. Ouch major time pain. Years later I still recall the exact location of that stuck with pins brain area. I also remember my mother reading a section of Norman Mailer to me where he described his own brain as being like, “Swiss Cheese”. I understood the meaning directly, because of my poor judgment that night.
Why do I so digress? Well, my first evening with Princess Kismet can be described as the removal and flying away of those thousand pins sticking in my brain. My experience of her added energy, beauty to my lessened life. She is a freedom to explore in celebration not to hide within feeling sorry for my failures in life which are many. These thousand points of what Reagan might call light shining rather than being hidden under a bushel upon the hill, if we could consult his ghost, I called starships launching to the edge of the universe.
The use of poetic and lyrical infusions into this story were used because my personal meeting with Princess Kismet was really ineffable possessing magical energy. Instead of being out of body, it was more like being out of galaxy. A phenomenon that no scientist could hope to measure.
Thank you for your kind words Tiffany. I appreciate them, because I know how cool and well done the meter is within your own poetry.
Outstanding as usual….had to read it twice!
Thank you Sheri, because I know you are busy with your grandchild and are still healing from your two wrist surgeries. Your good family are in my prayers. The gift of a child opens the world to us. Just imagine that your grandchild may see the 22nd century and the next generation after your grandchild most likely will see that century.
I worried about that 22nd century being a blessed one for those who will come after me. That is until I met the young lady of my story. In childhood I met a doctor born in the 1860s and may share my love soon with a young lady who will influence that 22nd century, perhaps even seeing it herself in old age. To be a part of lives spanning 340 years astounds me. I’m still trying to believe the math. She gives me hope of an age of starships and explorations in space that I won’t be part of directly, but need to believe in.
May the best starship win…”Ooops, I did it again”. May the best Unicorn win a kiss. “I’m not that innocent.”
Now, I’m holding up three fingers on my left hand and three fingers on my right hand. Add the fingers together and how should you vote? Bippidy…bobbidy…me.
Quite entertaining to say the least. It is a ride to take, unfasten your seatbelt and just glide into the rolling, rocking, lyrical mind stream ramped with passionate titillation and lyrical meanderings that do not make entire sense at all…but that does not seem to be the intention. The Disney ride alone is worth the price of admission.