PLOT FATALE - PART ONE: 11 POEMS + PLAYLIST
Welcome to PART ONE of PLOT FATALE, a series of experimental neo-noir metafictional surrealist narrative poems. I hope you enjoy reading these poems as much as I enjoyed writing them.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE
02/31 PLOT FATALE
03/31 STUN GUN
04/31 PAINTED PAIN
05/31 STALKER WITHIN
06/31 MONDAY COMETH
07/31 UNDERGROUND
08/31 ALIEN GLOW
09/31 ON THE ABSENCE OF THUNDER
10/31 BLUE SMOKE
11/31 FLIMFLAM
Disclaimer
PLAYLIST
PLOT FATALE
PART ONE
01/31 [MORRIS ALWAYS DIES ON WEDNESDAYS]
Each poem is a gun
Loaded with blanks
Most times
A long shot
In the dark
At ghosts
Shadows from too many Saturdays
Slowly bleeding into dull nothingness
Sundays blur
Mondays fog
One-eyed Tuesdays
Target dry sentences
Wishing it were Friday
It's Wednesday now
Lengthiest day of the week
A heatwave’s never-ending tongue
Stretching beyond the dying sun
Soft egg words hard boiling
Falling off incandescent terraces
Failing to hit solid mind ground
Solid anything
Apprehending nothing
A new month
Just as empty
Morris doesn't care anymore
◽️◽️◽️
02/31 [PLOT FATALE]
Evening
The plot enters Morris’ mind as if the doors were open
They were
Takes a seat
Lights a cigarette
Blue smoke plumes up into the ghost of a story
Morris appraises the plot
Some other writers might fall for it
Morris knows better
That is not a piece of flash
It's got legs as long as a novel
A body thicker than War and Peace
This one is looking for a place to rest
Open centuries-old luggage
Spill a laundry list of characters
Rearrange Morris' marbles
A thousand-page hardcover
Paperback marriage
Morris frowns
Not interested
Opens a notebook
Screams ink onto the page
“How many times must I explain
I’m already happily married
to the muses?”
Realizes the sentence is double-edged
Sheathes all hard-boiling anger and goes out
Wearing the neon night as a trench coat
Smoke-decked and heavy
Soon to be unbuttoned
◽️◽️◽️
03/31 [STUN GUN]
Morris treads concrete
Rain smudges vision & mind
A shadowy sketch of the city
More lucid dream than scape
When it finally stops
The silence stuns Morris
Eyes see nothing moving
Ears go searching for life
Where is everyone
The noises
The voices
The rhythm of a million people
[Involuntary poetry gone]
Morris leans heavily
Against a streetlight
Dumbfounded wonders
“Is time over at last?”
No soul offers a clue
◽️◽️◽️
04/31 [PAINTED PAIN]
Deafening silence
Crushes the night
Life made void
Under the light
Morris thinks
“I don’t care.”
Someone has painted
Four letters still bleeding
Uneven on a blind wall
PAIN
Morris knows that ink
In and out
Upside down
Sideways
Morris keeps thinking
“I don’t care.”
A message to new convoluted plots
Storied ghosts & supercilious muses
“Stop playing games.”
[Unless]
Morris touches
The wet paint
Dark blood rushes
Blotches reason
Pages no longer
Muted or blank
“Go away.”
For a moment
Morris’ mind
Forgets to push
“I don’t care.”
◽️◽️◽️
05/31 [STALKER WITHIN]
Memory
Pumps the heart
Rusted shrapnel
Wounds
Morris doesn’t know who
[What] the creature was
Mischievous
Mind-melting
Comportment
Vivid still
All kinds of bleak snippets
Induced at warp speed
That & visions of stories
Vast lore-dense galaxies
Squalid ghost-universes
A million
Million
Libraries
Infinity
Waiting to be
Crafted
Poisonous recall
Tsunami
Overwhelmed
Morris swoons
[The old way]
Hits wet concrete
Helplessly
Vomiting words
◽️◽️◽️
06/31 [MONDAY COMETH]
Morris
MORRIS
A voice rasps
Cries out
A human voice
Human enough
Existential bourbon
Impervious to soap
Waiting-Tom’s stink
Summons a comet
Brings about sunrise
Morris’ lethargy caves
Hazy mind-eyes open
“Where's everyone?”
They're all inside
A different tall tale
Waiting-Tom says
Morris takes the hand
Tenderly
They walk arm in arm
Like they used to
Once
A thousand times
A million years ago
[Not like that]
Castaways
Resetting the clock
Escaping a storm
Looking for shelter
Home sweet home
Emerald and liquid
The Fall of the House of Absinthe
◽️◽️◽️
07/31 [UNDERGROUND]
At the empty saloon
Waiting-Tom grins a welcome
Revealing ink-stained teeth
From too many nights spent
Cavorting with the ungraspable
Unspoken words fill the room
Wall-papered with old stories
[Specters of dark ancient muses]
Framed but never told outside
Morris looks at the pictures
A bruit of other pasts lingers
Audible like an exotic clock
Visible to the naked mind
Waiting-Tom sits at the piano
Pretending to be the other one
Plays Picture In A Frame
Morris says
“That’s not me anymore.”
◽️◽️◽️
08/31 [ALIEN GLOW]
Waiting-Tom stops playing
Turns into blue smoke & wafts
Absconding with the piano
The room fades to black
Wet concrete against skin
Morris is back on the sidewalk
Feeling half-purged half-dead
[Wednesday again]
The blurring drizzle returns
Life at large in hiding muted still
[Yet something feels different]
Moored to the street lamp
Morris stands up
Looks at the sky
A huge orange rots up high
Eerie glow piercing the night
Like a B-movie alien moon
“It's the end of the world
as we know it & I feel fine?”
Morris can't say [or sing]
◽️◽️◽️
09/31 [ON THE ABSENCE OF THUNDER]
The rotten alien moon grows bigger
An orange sponge absorbing drizzle
Until the sky is a dried-up tangerine
Arms tightly around the street lamp
Morris watches but does nothing
Intrepid is a word from [for] the past
Long gone are those busy mornings
When sitting on the floor before breakfast
Setting ghosts ablaze as they floated
Across the mind & watching their ash
Gather before turning it into syntax
Was as natural as being wide awake
Just as buried are the evenings of eating
Dead spiders [sprawled trapeze artists]
Right from the web to bravely summon
Sad electric clowns with accordion hearts
Thursday is but a misnomer now
Thor has left the building
◽️◽️◽️
10/31 [BLUE SMOKE]
Morris
MORRIS
Waiting-Tom is back
Calling from above
Let go of that light & fly
Fly to me like before
The orange alien moon
Rotting in the sky [posing
As Waiting-Tom] says
Morris considers the offer & waits
For a Tom-song about the weather
Looks around searching [hoping]
Intent on finding any lost umbrella
A hint of Mary Poppins to ascend
Then notices the shady bowler hat
[Roadkill or a ruse] on the sidewalk
Blue smoke slowly billowing from it
It wasn't there before
Morris is afraid
The plot may be thickening
[Sickening already]
Wonders if acedia can bloom
Neon nib trails on blank pages
A sudden splitting headache hits
[Bullet-like through the left eye]
Welcomed as the only known cure
Against surreal tangerine night skies
PAIN
Letters are still bleeding dark
Makeshift sigils on the blind
Wall announcing The Blood
Of a Poet waiting [for Morris]
11/31 [FLIMFLAM]
Waiting-Tom
[The rotting orange alien moon
Posing as two different Toms]
Finally starts to sing
Without a piano [a body]
It doesn't sound remotely like
The original [or any kind of song]
& Headache escalates to migraine
The dark bowler hat coughs
Another blue smoke plume
[A cliché artifice] to grab
Morris’ attention [it works]
Losing interest in faux Waiting-Tom
Yet still carefully moored to the street lamp
Morris follows the blue smoke [eyes only]
As it tries to become more than mere wraith
The orange moon sulks to dark plum
Purple [as that stormy prose of old]
Whines about Morris The Ungrateful
Tints the night with a new bad cover
A heavy power ballad rains
Over a sad empty cityscape
Flickery neon signs glistening
Their useless gaudy invitations
Morris looks at the blind wall
PAIN
[Paint] is now glowing in gloaming
The four letters begin to rearrange
Themselves [pieces in a board game]
IPA N
I APN
INAP
“I nap?”
Morris wakes up
◽️◽️◽️
[END OF PART ONE]
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Back in the day, July used to be a Camp NaNoWriMo month: 31 days of creative writing without the constraints of having to craft a 50K-word novel. NaNoWriMo is dead. All things die, I guess. Still, there’s no reason not to take a walk on the wild side of writing this month. With Morris.
PLOT FATALE aka A MONTH OF MORRIS (July 1 - 31, 2026) is a challenge within a challenge: Noir Poetry 365 with a specific protagonist, a writer/poet named Morris.
But who is Morris really? What is Morris? I have 31 days to find out. Or not. 😎
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Disclaimer: This is a live, unrefined first draft of an ongoing narrative poetry cycle. Subject to future revisions. [Translation: I’m just having fun. Welcome to my playground.]
© 2026 C.E. NOIR. All Rights Reserved.
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