I
If I invoke impudence, it is ignorance I indulge insofar I'm immensely interested in impressive idiosyncrasies involving inclinations into innovative intercourse, investigating intriguing intimate information involving imaginative individuals in infatuations incorporating immoral, ignominious, insanely intense invasions into impregnable, inner inlets inside impenetrable inamorata--inconspicuously incognito--including idiomatic innuendo, indelicate ineffability, immodest indecency, impure impropriety, inspiring inventiveness, ingeniously inciting incentives--insatiably incessant, incessantly insatiable--inasmuch it is inevitably implied in important, indiscreet, illicit invitations, I imagine.
TERRENCE THE TIMID TURTLE
Terrence, timid towards the tortoise tyrant Theodore the Twentieth, traversed Titan's terrain, treading towards the tall Trinity towers, through the two tungsten tombs that transcribed Turbos the Terrible's transcendental theology that 'twined Tyrone the Technomancer's three trustworthy teachings together, then through the terrifying thunderous tundras towards Titan's topmost tips, till the trembling turtle trudged towards the Titanic Tree that, through Terrence the Tough's tiny talkative talisman, taught thousands to tactfully tussle the Tyrant's totalitarian terrors, terminating Theodore through thievery, then tanks, then torture!
Vertigo - Why I Write
Addicted to
writing,
I shake poetry
out of my sleeves.
Drunk with
celestial parade
of shiny words,
tumbling into
rising sun,
praying to
the muse hiding
behind me
in black voids
of rejection.
Time down drain
of moneyless pit,
coded language
that only writers
understand.
Roaring visions
and echoes
resonating,
seeing the world
from my perspective
without winning
or losing.
Mood changing
poetry therapy
polished trances
as I crave
the high
that only writing
can bring.
I drink of it
deeply in
vertigo
of love.
Fiction—The Other Borges
Author's Note (For Context): This is a ficción, inside joke, eulogy, parody, and testament of the great translator and writer Jorge Borges, in imitation of his excellent "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."
I owe the discovery of a Borgesian doppelganger to the conjunction of a mirror site and an entry on Wikipedia. The mirror troubled the depths of my thoughts in my suburban home in Sugar Land, Texas; the Wiki-page was devoted to an author with a similar name, another Borges. My friend had been explaining the utility of a mirror site, a website replica created to divert network traffic, when, in jest, he said that mirrors and copulation were abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men. The phrasing seemed too eloquent for his invention, and I asked who said it. Jorge Borges, was the reply. A strange sense of unreality set in, and I asked if he had any relation to the Argentine writer of the same name, to which my friend said – I don’t think so.
We set about to search for this Borges on the Internet, but could find nothing, only webpages saying Page Not Found, since my Wifi wasn't working. To save face, he searched again on his phone, but could only find the other Borges – the magical realist from South America. Again, he distanced the quote's origin and literary master, arguing that they were separate persons. I finally decided this had been a fruitless fiction derived from my friend's pride and insecurity in claiming the passage for his own. Surely, if there had been two Borgeses, I would have heard of this anomaly, this controversy?
Years later, I would find a book by this alt-author in a used book store on 99. The work was titled The Garden of Forking Paths, and contained a slew of stories, all strange and wonderful and infinitesimally complex. I was leaving the store when in the Spanish aisle I saw the name Borges in bold print. It was on the cover of El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan – clearly, the work of the Original Author. I bought both works and brought them to my home for careful examination, or to use a word discounted by high school teachers, to peruse. What I found was astonishing. The two texts, by two authors of the same name, were completely unrelated in regards to content. In fact, one was incomprehensible, written in a language divergent to ours: Spanish. Yet the structures were identical, or nearly so, for both had Tables of Contents, chapter headings, a body of pages, a foreword and index. And the stories corresponded; their paragraphs and even their punctuation were terribly homogenous. I felt as if I'd found some otherworldly Rosetta Stone, some fragment of twin dimensions.
The pictures of the authors in the book jackets looked related, although one was much older, shrewder, with a drooping eye. They could have been twins if it weren't for the gap in years, or duplicates, as if God had multiplied Soul and Body – some error in creation buried beneath the continuities.
My final discovery was on the bookshelf of a woman I was wooing. She was a graduate student renting her professor's small one-bedroom apartment while he was on sabbatical. There was an erotic nature to our connection, accentuated by strange phallic images the professor had put up on the walls. African tribal spears, bolo knives, and near-nude women with large breasts in Picasso-like frontality. On her shelf, or rather, the professor's shelf, was a copy of Borges' Forking Paths. One night, I brought my own copy from home (possibly by the same author, possibly by the Other) and compared the two. What I found led to my utter distress and subsequent destruction of the books. The works were the same and not the same, as if the two writers had plagiarized the same source, some ur-text, or precursor. In one book, the words read, "I have known that thing the Greeks knew not – uncertainty." The other: “I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks." Both, despite distance, derivation, offered a glimpse into the unrealness of my world – its labyrinths, its mirrors.
I struck a match which burned like the sun above me, and put it to the books. For a moment, I thought there were twin suns crackling in the afternoon heat, before the bookfire rescinded, leaving behind its ashy droppings, a clutter of black fragments belonging to the libraries of Hell.
Hollow
I am on my knees
for a god I no longer believe in,
How long ago did I stop?
in a place I vowed
I would never enter again,
For fear
trying to find some meaning
in all that you did
I can’t
and all that you
wanted to do
Longed
but didn’t; kneeling
for the nights I could not even
Slightly
close my eyes without seeing you, kneeling
for the earth that is locked in the orbit
Aimlessly
of the thing that slowly kills it; please
let there be some meaning
Somehow
to this- to all that you did and
all that you didn’t
Why not?
and all that I don’t want to remember
but don’t know how to forget;
Between memory and nightmare
even kneeling for this pretend god
can not bring me
with heaving, hurting chest
to find meaning
in the meaningless.
A Bedtime Story for Aisling
Once upon a time, in the lovely kingdom of Primavera, there lived a beautiful princess named Princess Angela. She was willowy and graceful, with long blonde hair and brown eyes and rosebud lips which smiled with kind light on her peaceful subjects. She loved ruling the kingdom of Primavera, because life there was very orderly and lovely.
The kingdom lived in perpetual springtime. Flowers bloomed, the weather stayed temperate and the world was filled with love and fresh prosperity. Princess Angela was very grateful for this. Springtime was very predictably lovely, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
The princess had intelligence to match her beauty. She spent much of the daytime reclined in the palace library, reading as many books as she possibly could.
One day, she came across an old mahogany book bound in gold. It was propped up behind the many shelves of pastel volumes, and its dark coloring intrigued her. She pulled it off the shelf and into her lap.
As she began to read, the book brought to mind images of things she had never thought to imagine before. A kingdom where the leaves turned red and gold and orange and the air was crisp and smelled of firewood began to form in her mind. The world the book described sounded fiery and beautiful.
She looked out the window and saw the pink, springtime blossoms of the cherry trees. She loved her world of everlasting spring. But she had never seen anything like the world described in the book. She had to know whether it was true or not.
Pushing her feet back into her white lace slippers, she picked up the mahogany book and left to visit her dear Sir Henry, a very kind and brilliant man.
Sir Henry had been her childhood friend and was now her springtime lover. He has grass green eyes and had hair of spun gold, and seemed to walk on the breath of spring itself. He was neither here nor there, yet whenever Princess Angela wanted him, he would come to her side.
Standing in the gazebo in the middle of the rose arbor in the palace gardens, the Princess stared out into the hazy pink afternoon. “Oh, my dearest Henry. Please come help me.”
Presently, the sound of hoofbeats cut the still air. Sir Henry rode onto the terrace on his milk white steed with the grandeur of the most chivalristic nobleman. The golden sun caught his smiling eyes and made the Princess’s heart skip a beat.
Dismounting, Sir Henry entered the gazebo and kissed his princess’s china hand in greeting. “Loveliest Angela. Why have you called me into the grace of your presence today? I will be delighted to assist you in any way I might.”
With a rose-petal blush upon her alabaster cheeks, Princess Angela produced the mahogany book from behind her back. “Darling Henry, can you help me to understand the kingdom this book describes? Is it true?”
When they landed upon the book in Angela’s hands, Sir Henry’s eyes took on the saddest light she had ever seen. There was the smallest smile on his lips. “Oh my love. I always feared this day was coming. I had hoped it would not come upon us, but I know you always seek beauty. And you have found it yet again.”
Angela blinked. “Whatever do you mean, Henry? What’s wrong?”
The sad smile was still upon his lips. “Nothing is wrong, my sweet. But spring must end now.”
Angela was stunned. Seeing the lost expression on her face, Sir Henry took her hand in his and ran a thumb over hers as he explained:
“The kingdom described in the book is this kingdom, many moons ago. The leaves changed color and fell off of the trees because it was Autumn. Autumn is a season, much like Spring is a season.”
He paused, looking down at their hands. “There are normally many seasons. Spring and Autumn are only two of them. The other two are called Winter and Summer. Winter brings silver air and white stars which fall from the heavens and bathe the earth in calm. Summer brings lemonade and clear blue skies and golden sunlight which gilds everything in precious bliss.”
“It all sounds lovely, Henry. Why do we only have spring?”
Henry met her eyes sadly. “Spring brings hope to people. Spring means new beginnings, love, life, and perpetual beauty. It means blossoms and fresh air and happiness. People loved these feelings. They wanted to keep them forever.” He looked back down at their joined hands. “So although Autumn brought bounty and winter brought anticipation and summer brought reward, the people also felt as though they brought negative things. Autumn brought a feeling of ending. Winter brought a feeling of hopelessness and summer brought empty promises. So they did away with them, and only kept spring because to them it meant perpetual happiness.”
Angela met his eyes again. “That's foolish, isn't it? People don't want something gorgeous because of the potential sadnesses attached to it.”
Henry nodded. “It is. But the kingdom wanted it at the time. So they brought my father.”
Angela looked up suddenly. “Your father?”
Again, Henry nodded. “My father was the baron of spring. As long as he stayed in the kingdom of Primavera, spring would be eternal. As time past, my father married the Lady Aster and she gave birth to me. Alas, my father had to leave to bring springtime to another kingdom. He brought my mother with him and left me here to continue his legacy.”
Angela shifted her gaze back down to their joined hands. She was beginning to understand. “I'm sorry Henry. But our kingdom needs seasons again. My people need to learn to love the beauty of change again, instead of fearing the hatred of it. As gorgeous as spring is, there's so much beauty just waiting to be found. If we stay in one endless loop, how are we to know what we have in store? What's familiar will always be comfortable. But there's so much else to see if we can only allow ourselves.”
Henry smiled upon her beautiful rosy face. “Of course, lovely Angela. I knew you would make the right decision for you and your people. But if spring leaves, I must leave too.”
Angela looked at his lovely eyes sadly, and wrapped her arms around him. “I shall miss you terribly, my Henry.” He stroked her long hair and gently smiled. “I will miss you too. But you will find a prince who will be there for you through all seasons. And I will always be with you in the breath of a spring breeze. Spring always comes back after winter chills the earth.”
Angela felt a single crystal tear slip from her eye and land on his shoulder. But she pulled back and smiled up at him.
“Good-bye, my Henry. See you in the spring.”
He gently placed a hand on her alabaster cheek. “Good-bye, lovely Angela. Go find all the beauty you possibly can.”
He leaned down and placed a final, gentle kiss on her rosebud lips. When Angela opened her eyes, she found that he was gone. He had turned into rose petals, which were being picked up by the breeze and going where spring was needed next.
She smiled. Leaving the gazebo and returning to the palace, she could already feel a change in the air. Summer was on the horizon. Laughing, she began to run. She had to tell her subjects about how beautiful change could be.
She couldn't wait to see how much beauty her kingdom had in store. Unknown beauty, yes, but she knew that whatever it was, it would be breathtaking.
“Thank you, Henry.” She whispered. And as she walked through the palace hall, she swore she could smell roses.
Prose Challenge of the Week #38
We hope that you are all enjoying what's left of these summer months.
It’s week thirty-eight of the Prose Challenge of the Week! Last week saw you all writing poetry and prose using the word manifest. We had shed-loads of superb entries to read, so thank you everyone.
Before we find out which one of you takes the $100 prize, let’s take a look at this week’s prompt:
Prose Challenge of the Week #38: Write a piece of micropoetry about what summer means to you. The winner will be chosen based on a number of criteria, this includes: fire, form, and creative edge. Number of reads, bookmarks, and shares will also be taken into consideration. The winner will receive $100. When sharing to Twitter, please use the hashtag #ProseChallenge
Get writing about your summer, now.
Back to the winner of week thirty-seven. We have read all of your entries and thoroughly enjoyed every single one. There can only be one winner, however, and after much deliberation that winner is, @Andreso with their untitled piece. Congratulations to you, we will be in touch shortly to arrange transfer of your winnings!
That’s all for this week, here’s to a week filled with all things Prose!
Until next time, Prosers,
Prose.
