General

Fraud can be a noun or a verb and if you do something fraudulently, then it is an adverb.  There will always be unscrupulous people around looking for ways to exploit others.  Perhaps the earliest recorded case of fraud in the Western world was that of Hegestratos and Xenothemis in 300 B.C.  A Greek merchant named Hegestratos took out an insurance policy on a boat for a large sum, with the deliberate intention of sinking it.  At this time, it was known as bottomry and not referred to as insurance, and a bottomry bond, is a contract where a shipowner provides his or her ship as security for a loan to finance a voyage or for a certain period of time.  Hegestratos secured a bottomry to cover the value of his boat in case it was to sink during the voyage between Syracuse (modern-day Sicily) and Athens, Greece.  If the ship successfully completed the voyage…

I wrote a Six Sentence Story yesterday about intrusive questionnaires at doctor’s offices and a possible downside from giving the medical community too much information about stuff that isn’t any of their business. Reena’s prompt gave me a wonderful opportunity to write a dystopian tale about that concern.

We have a single word prompt after a long time, and the word is

FRAUD

Gillian was, and always had been, an exemplary citizen. She believed in ‘goodness’ and honesty because she never questioned the motives of others as possibly being different from her own. She was well-liked and respected in her community primarily because of her uncompromising, somewhat naive, optimism.
Gillian enjoyed a long and trusting rapport with her doctor who had monitored her congenital heart condition since her early 30’s. She’d answered every question posed to her over 20 years there in a thorough and honest fashion because she never…

Th following poem was inspired by this prompt from Reena Saxena, and this prompt from ronovanwrites. I encourage you to have a look at them if you’re looking to give your creativity a nudge. 😉

It’s been said, “Time heals all wounds.”
Look around you; this isn’t true
Nay, mental wounds are more like glue
Tend to stick ‘til given heart’s heed

On her writing blog Reena Saxena has provided two images as writing prompts for this week, one of which is an image of clocks. The clocks, together with my second job as an art model, inspired me to write a poem in free verse, illustrated with a drawing of mine that includes a self-portrait, pot belly and all. The names of both the art gallery and the artist are fictional.

In response to https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2023/06/01/reenas-xploration-challenge-282/

Time, why so slow?

As a child,

the torture of months,

Seven, seven and a quarter,

My next milestone,

years away.

Each day, an adventure.

Wanting to be an adult,

Eighteen, independence,

to live my own life.

Now, another milestone.

Thirty, forty, fifty. Now, nearly sixty.

Time, going quickly.

Rushing

from spring to winter,

another birthday.

Why does time fly so fast?

Reena’s Xploration Challenge #281

PROMPT #281

SEALED REPORT

Come new scam

Set up a committee

To investigate

One more sealed report

To be shelved

Till the next election

To manipulate the

offenders

To extortions

Or favors

Everything is fare…

Long Before There Was An Us

how silly if we ever think of it though
truly time flies by so fast no matter what we do
back then we never knew it would be this fast
that’s why we took the liberty of not letting love last.

’twas funny for we knew we love deeply
the kind of love even the heavens would envy
too late when we realized love took the freedom and flew
up and far away it went to where we never knew.

so here we are in a crowded room filled of people
with our endless game of who screwed up the most, of the little
and who took the easy road out leaving the other oblivious
why love left so sudden it made the other anxious.

fast forward to today, we dare and say
“i love you with all my heart, come what may”
but…