Too many

Questions

And not enough

Answers

It’s like

Sitting idle

Surrounded

By dancers

We live

And we try

And we sigh

Every time

As the world

Slams on brakes

That could stop

On a dime

And it’s like

Every time

It’s a new

Damn

Experience

It builds

And it builds

As it adds

To the weariness

But time

Doesn’t stop

It keeps

Going

And going

And you’re stuck

With

The paddles

Keep rowing

And rowing

You’re caught in

The

Current

And going

Upstream

And what falls

Out of

The boat

You could

Never

Redeem

You want to

Give in

Because living

Is

So

Hectic

But in truth

The water is

Still

And becoming

More septic

You weren’t born

With a sail

So now it’s

Sink

Or swim

As your false

Lighthouse

Is becoming

More

Dim

There’s no

Slowing down

And there's no

Giving up

Unless you

Choose

To

Drown

In this

Half

Empty cup

Daniel

J

Dabney

Ripping and tearing

my life like a raptor

Shredded in sin

to begin a new chapter

There's something new

and a whole lot that's old

Just another crease shown

as you watch me unfold

A nightmare that deems

me back to "fuck all" it seems

Fiending for the dreams

that I cannot redeem

I feel the need to announce

my favorite color is black

And color or not I denounce

your evil contract

Now Darkness consumes

what's left of my heart

As the likeness resumes

a bullseye with hates dart

To compensate towards a day

for my life to start over

And desecrate all the wicked

lurking over my shoulder

Megalomaniacal sickening

heinous corrupt

This fucking abrupt volcano

is just waiting to erupt

I could go on and on

an endless metaphorical mile

But I'll just step away

and leave this rhyme

with a smile

DjD

And my fucked up mind

Prose is a primarily a writing site, that is a site where you post your writing. It is secondarily a reading site. The way one comes by followers is by reading - a tradition is read 10 for each write you post - you follow writers whose posts appeal, connect or you appreciate. Often by liking, reposting and eventually following a writer, that writer is encouraged to read, like, reposts and may decide to follow your writing. Writing challenges provides more readership of your work as the entries get higher readership than most stand alone postings.

I suffer from the

Decay of darkness

Temptations

Take me to

Forbidden chambers

Where wretched

Cursed demons

Eat of my flesh

Drink of my blood

Purify me by defilement

Flay me with the entrails

Of fallen idols

I wholly embrace

Sacrilege and lust

Magnanimously

While the soiled hands

Of the leper

Intimately caress me

With no remorse

I summon the goddess

And her many legions

Of exotic incarnations

Full of passion

I’ve become

A bestial prostitute

Who willingly

Submits to Lilith

For the wanton pleasure

Of sexual excesses

The pain of knowledge

That brings me to

Eternal damnation

I wander the peaceful predawn streets

of a small mill-town among the evergreens,

stopping to listen to the sweet, pure sound

of silence as its residents sleep.

Feathered heralds begin to paint the gray

with welcoming songs of joy and hope,

as nocturnal creatures tuck themselves in,

hiding from the brightness to come.

The sun creeps slowly from its bed,

and dawn gently kisses the landscape.

Like a beautiful lover, its tender caress

gradually rouses a brand new day.

Clarity grows in strength and purpose,

adding anticipation in waves of definition,

building to a glorious moment of release

when sunshine erupts over the hills.

The world is bathed in color and light

as morning flowers turn, exposing themselves

without shame to the sun’s life-giving rays,

standing strong amidst the sparkling dew.

———————————

© 2023 dustygrein

I loose myself in my memories, lifetimes ago, remembering all the good times with my mother and grandmother, my sweet children when they were younger, days spent out in the pasture with my horses.

Falling asleep to the sound of birds and horses grazing on a warm summer day, the breeze playing with my hair.

Remembering the scent of freshly cut alfalfa hay, and freshly turned garden soil. These are my favorite places, and I visit them in my memories especially when I feel lost.

Bigger than anything

I may be--

as seemingly,

inconspicuous

A herald not

the same as

the sceptre of

Invisibility

Seen 'n heard but

unreachable--

the consequences

real yet fleeting

With backlashes

on either side

escaping out

from the crown

In the foliage

of silent noses

and red eyes,

Listening!

I am on the scent

I am on the scent

in the year

of the Rabbit.

2023 JAN 22

Take

With two hands

All that is hollow

With acid rejection

Swallow the black

Reveal the void

Feel your soul sweat

Your pulse thicken

As your mind fractures

The sound of grace

He sat hunched over in an old rusted lawn chair whittling a foot length cut of deep cedar heart. The wood was the color of near raw meat and a pile of fine pink shavings lay gathering between two boots as weathered and cracked as the old man's face. I sat across from him. The evening was quiet save for the steely hiss of the blade in its easy passings, its tempo as slow and steady as time itself, sock-slides walking with the quiet footsteps of our own hours inevitable reduction.

Neither of us had spoke for some time. A dog barked somewhere beyond the treeline.

"There a point to that" I asked.

"Point to what?" He replied, still leaned in at his work.

"That there" and I nodded at the knife as though he'd bothered looking up.

He continued silently at his work and i sat studying the two fresh wounds on the top of his bare scalp. He'd aquired a habit, in his later years, of misjudging the heights of the most unforgiving of doorframes.

"You tell me" he said finally "There a point to anything?"

"Well I dont know" I replied, watching him there a minute, "but I can generally see the sense of a thing when its got some."

I could see a grin spread through his yellowed whiskers.

"Kindly a smart-ass ain't cha ole top"

He looked up then with the blade keeping at its rhythm as though the knife itself were the mover of old fleshly instruments.

"Suppose you can tame a stick of wood to curl up like'at?"

He gestured down at the pile at his feet. The shavings were so fine they wound themselves up in tight pink coils that sat shivering in the afternoons longshadows; the only evidence of a breeze too gentle for the crudeness of mans senses.

"No" I said, "but i caint say i recall when I'da needed to."

He shook his head and chuckled, and continued his work.

"What 'chu gonna do when you curl up that whole stick reckon?" I asked.

"Git another'un" he said, and spat dead center to the pile of shavings hard enough to scatter a few at the toe of my boots. "Or i might could make ya a pilla outta this here."

He stopped his whittling then and sat leaning with his forearms across his legs. Two scared and work thickened hands hung limp and clawlike over his knees. The old Barlow that dangled from his fingertips had endured enough sharpenings over the years that it was little more than a dark pitted sliver of itself.

"Who's the one sittin there aint doin nothin?" He said, and stared at me for a long while beneath a tangle of wirey grey eyebrows, and eyes as pale and faded as the milky winter sky that framed them.

I know, i know" he said "You think it matters what it is that a man does with his time. And you think thataway cause you caint see a thing as no more than the beginning and end of itself". He went back to his whittling then and I suddenly recalled those same eyes as a boy, so bright, so fierce in their blue they could have been carved and pressed from the ice of an ancient glacier.

I didnt say a word till we sat down for super. I just sat watching him. I watched and i searched my mind -

and nowhere in those imaginings could i find a single world where the old man did not exist.