March’s Guest Storyteller — Benjamin F Jones

Benjamin F Jones is a writer from South Wales in the UK. He has worked in over twenty different jobs from wedding photographer to aerospace engineer but is currently studying to be a humanistic therapist.

His first novel, 400 years between stars, is coming out in March 2014 and he is currently working on a collection of prose poetry entitled, Which can fly higher, dragons or aeroplanes?

He has a passion for prose poetry and short and rather quirky science fiction but has a background in poetry which adds a colour to everything he writes. Some of his short prose fragments can be found at GraphiteBunny.

Freedom Climbs on Logs Rooted

Freedom climbs on logs rooted in bricks worn smooth as oranges. The blue is cluttered with battleship clouds that muster to confuse the sun. Girls in summer dresses and bobble hats throw stones at the waves – a cacophony of pebbles thrashed by the sea as we poke a dead gull into the water. Silver rain conceals land across the estuary. We’re drumming on flotsam and steel chimes as engineers build a barbeque from bomb factory shrapnel – the explosion shattered the hotel windows over a mile away. A boot filled with shells. Driftwood stokes the flames that snatch at dinner. We open crown tops with scrap metal and eat sausages with sand and missing ketchup. When the meal is over we find pieces of crystallised sky have fallen like thumbnail glass. Tracking footprints you sing as we follow the tide. The sun is on mute. My shirt smells of wood-smoke and charred marshmallows. I wring out the memories and put them into my mouth.

#

Sarah says: Thank you so much Benjamin for guest storytelling on my blog with this superb piece of prose poetry. For those of you who missed Benjamin’s earlier contribution to my blog, you might like to take a look at his amazing photographic contribution to the Wordless Wednesday slot back in October last year.

You can link to previous guest storytellers’ prose via this page.