Lori Hoeck

The dusty halls ring silent
Where light and warmth have fled.
All is hushed in this abode
Where the living live as dead,
Where days and nights cry aloud
To an end of quietness
When no more a soul must shrink aback
From the touch of human kindness.
Oh to quit this house of masks
Through which a guarded heart peers.
Oh to run into the light
And shed this cloak of fears.
But the door to here is bolted shut,
Built to stand against all stress.
It can’t be opened with guile or strength,
But only with warm gentleness.
And when that humble soul comes calling,
With the heart of a gentle friend,
Then gone will be the gloomy masks
And the living shall live again.

—

I wrote this poem in 1993.

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck

Coffee in hand, she watched the morning clouds first glow pink, then slowly fill the sky with a canopy of fire.

“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight; Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” The old timers’ saying made her wonder, did the sky know her heart?

Even with the warmth of strong coffee, she shivered, but not from the cold. The handgun on the kitchen table lay ready. She hoped she was as well.

Her friends all said she had choices, but from her viewpoint there was only one. He’d already made it clear he would never let go, never stop looking, never give her up. She’d lived through enough blood, bruises, and broken bones to know what he could do.

It was time to put a stop to it all.

Down the hallway, she heard their son stir in his bed. His birthday was next month, “The Big Fife,” as the boy called it.

At least this birthday wouldn’t include a trip to the hospital with the smell of cake and blood mixed together.

Visions of that day burned resolve into her soul. She carefully set down her coffee and picked up the weapon. It felt right in her hand, heavy and durable.

Then she heard it. The motor of his pick-up truck coming down the road, gears down shifting to make the turn into the driveway.

I will enjoy selling that truck, she thought, if only to never feel the fearful anticipation again.

She heard the door open on his truck but not shut.

He must be drunk. Again.

Then she heard the front door burst open with a kick, followed by the sound of a shotgun being cocked.

As he made his way through the house and toward the kitchen, he crowed triumphantly,  mockingly, “Honey, I’m home!”

Her jaw clenched. Not for long.
——–

——–
As an EMT who has responded to more than one domestic violence scene,  I don’t advocate this response, but I can understand it.

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck

Since this blog explores writing, I’m including a favorite post from my previous blog:

Twenty-nine years ago when I was a young adult in Aspen, Colorado, a one-man show came to town. A talented, but fairly unknown actor (not Hal Holbrook) had memorized almost every line and moment of Mark Twain’s life — my favorite author at the time. The actor even had the look, gestures, and witticism of Samuel Langhorne Clemens down to an art.

I sat mesmerized by the performer, enthralled to see Mark Twain come alive before my very eyes. Every wave of the cigar, each dancing smile of self-satisfaction at a joke well received, and the playful Southern accent drew me into the act.

Toward the end of an fun evening of entertaining, the actor said he would answer any questions from the audience. The Aspen crowd was quick to ask Mark Twain about his take on current politics and trends. The actor enjoyed adding Twain’s satire to his answers and obviously had fun with the give and take.

Finally, I raised my hand. Sweeping across the room, expecting another barbed questioned, he drew near and asked, “And what would your question be little lady?”

I replied, “I want to be a writer. What do I do to become a better writer?”

Suddenly the room fell silent. The actor and audience looked into my earnest face, and they realized I wanted Mark Twain, not the actor, to answer my question.

The man’s face softened, his mind switched gears, and he drew even closer, as if Mark Twain and this young woman were to have a private conversation. Everyone leaned forward to listen.

Mark Twain looked me in the eye and said, “Experience of life — not of books — is the only capital usable in writing well, and one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.”*

Quite frankly, I don’t remember the words exactly, I just remember he talked about living life more fully so you can write more deeply and richly.

In that one, stellar moment, my writing hero came down from on high and touched me with his words. As I looked into those Mark Twain eyes, I did hear that old father of American literature answer my question, and it changed my life. In those eyes, I felt Mark Twain bless my journey as a writer, a journey I’m still taking.

—

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck

—-

This poem came rushing out of me last year when I first explored the world of blogging. I posted it on SpaceAgeAge.com in response to many sad posts I read during a series of blog searches on personal growth and adversity.

The Light

The darkness called;
I followed, falling,
down into the underneath,
and lay ripped, shredded, torn.
In pain wracked, I reeked,
oozing bile-filled blood.
The darkness played music,
of fear and self-hatred,
until I danced ugly to the tune.
I heard my voice screaming,
“Give me one, not-dark thing!”
And there it was.
A pen-thin beam of sunlight,
stabbing the darkness.
Its smallness did not matter,
because its strength was in its source.
I followed the beam, eyes only for it,
until the darkness fell behind,
Soon came the sun, healing and warm.
I sat down and cried, releasing it all.

—

“If you can’t find the light, may it find you.”

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck

Here I am, blogging again, and this time under my own name. Many of you who will initially read this know me  — and my first blog — as SpaceAgeSage. Those first steps into blogging turned into an opportunity to write on personal development. It kept me writing for nearly a year before I wrapped it up with a post last February. In that final entry, I wrote that in the future, “I want to ramp up my writing so that I post higher quality prose — perhaps even poetry.”

Well, I’m back in the saddle again looking to wrangle some words together. I place all the blame at the feet of both Sean Platt and David Wright, the collaborative geniuses behind Collective Inkwell. Their recent writing contest fired up the fiction writer in me again. Try as I may to fight it, one of their two story prompts kept haunting me to finish it. Here is the pesky, little rascal: “Well, this is odd, he thought to himself.”

I have no idea how many stories lines welled up inside me like a geyser because of those #@%! eight words. One involved blood spatters, one a goofy ninja story, and one a science fiction tale that changed its plot flow every time I sat down to write.

To make matters worse, the science fiction tale wanted to turn itself into a novel. I’m not a short story writer. I’m trained as a journalist to write news that fits in newspaper columns, and I like to write sweeping adventure stories. My draft for a future best-selling novel (prayers appreciated) is at 84,000 words now, but I expect to write another 30,000 words to finish it.

The contest’s suggested maximum length was 2,000 words, and it took a lot of hair pulling to keep it near 3,000.  You can read the full story over at the  Collective Inkwell contest post. Scroll down to the comments section if you want to read it, and I know you will because here is the tasty first paragraph:

“Well, this is odd, he thought to himself. Time travel shouldn’t be this easy, should it? In less time than it took him to nervously swallow hard, Marco and his friend Baktu jumped 10 years into the past. One moment they stood on an alien planet, and now they found themselves in the cargo hold of the Union of Stars, flagship of the first emperor’s space fleet. They were here to stop an assassination and alter the course of human history.”

—

Sean and David have attracted some great writers for this contest, so grab a cup of coffee and take in some fun and even some scary fiction over in the comment section of their contest post.

As for this blog, I will post an assortment of poetry and prose both old and new. Let’s see where it will lead, shall we?

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck