Hide
Find me, no surprise
All I've ever done is lie
No need to hide
Always approve and never denied
Never die, always survive
All ego, All pride
I met you once
A lover's battle, I am your dunce
The war is won
Rear guard song is sung
Manure, the rot, the dung
Red corvette, no safe bet
All regret
stingray with bad pay
crash course, no support
Give up you spoiled sport
I don't have any riches
Just a hole in my head
Staples, no stitches
Harlots, whores, and ......wishes
The urgent black mass is here
The inaudible prayers remain static
Unknown factors cursed by optimism
Remnants of luck smelt down into tragedy
We learned to call it Good Drama
These flames all have different a name
But you do not have God's permission to udder it
Fear this blaze as it never fades or wains like God's utterance
What is paradise with no golden streets
Another daredevil performing reckless feats
The reverend's sermon, another rallying speech
Who will be bound, who will we drown, who shall preach
Who is danger close
Who do you love the most
Greatest thing since sliced bread, son of a bitch is toast
Slow burn, slow roast
Carpet bombing, coast to coast
Wounded are we all in the same way
He loved the Lord, he never knew when to pray
Always go, and never stay
Always clocked in and never payed
Same ole song, crowd favorite, never played
The bold truth never fade
All pride, no parade
Foul demon ran away from burning sage
Always flirting, never laid
Rage and sorrow have the same name and face
The human condition is never escaped
Always love, never hate
Always mend, and never break
Always restless, always pace
Magic trick, vanish without a trace
Always an honor, never disgraced
Mother I did not see you go
A slow dying sickness I too shall know
Always aging, but some never grow
I had love once, but I pawned it
You see my flaws, they are flaunted
The body is a temple, only it is haunted
Mutually assured destruction
Fire code...go on and launch it
Billy Idol’s candy brain, exclusive destruction, and what hides behind thoughts.
Episode sweet sixteen rings in with a beat of Billy Idol, into a stream of consciousness wake, led by a man of duality, and topped off with a poem by one of the ever-shining stars in our night sky...
Beccawaits and BIGT round off the video with style and loving grace.
Here's the lnk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aadNTBBb54M&t=84s
And here are the pieces.
https://www.theprose.com/post/807496/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/805779/...
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
A First...
I grew up in a small neighborhood. My two brothers, three sisters, and my mom lived in a housing project in the middle of Denver, CO. Some of the other kids were cool, but most of them were trouble so I stayed away and read books in my room.
Deep into our 10 year residence there, we played sports, went to church, started backyard dance groups. It was a real groove even though in all ten years, I hadn't a single girlfriend.
Then one of my sister's friends started whispering in my ear while we all hung out.
I didn't know how to respond but it was... well, hot.
She would say two sweet words, and then linger there.
"Meet me."
This went on for a week or so. I finally asked here "where" one day.
She told me how to find her bedroom window.
The night I arrived, a caller was already present. I still climbed up.
When she saw me, the previous fellah was dismissed promptly. I later learned he had never actually had the pleasure.
With anyone. To this day.
But I digress.
She told me to stay quite, that sge had to keep her door open. Mother's rules.
I saw her rummage through her closet and she returned with a condom.
Her mouth helped it on.
Then I was to lie back.
There are no words to describe the first caress of a naked girl's thighs. Especially as her hips grinded and melted onto yours.
But we were cut short at the sound of mummy headed upstairs.
I had to leave.
But left my virginity behind.
fin
Opium-Methadone
The month of mercy and forgiveness, and the disgust and loathing for other human beings who are nothing and worthless in my eyes. The moon doesn't exist tonight, only stars above the city like venereal disease scars, and here they are, glistening with dazzling clarity. I visited my mother today; she had terrifying toothaches, and the doctor prescribed 10 mg of Percocet per day for her. Lucky her, opiates for the masses.
I was in such a diminished mental state that I reached into the box and considered dissolving a crushed pill on my tongue, all for the noble purpose of sending the day-to-day troubles up to the high heavens, so that the joy of life would burst forth from the spring within her that has been clogged for years. Oh Mind-altering pills – you are the longest affair I've had in my life!
I returned the pills to the drawer, and I think my dick got hard up after I passed the test - five years clean. That's exactly twice as long as the longest time I managed not to fuck over the heart of every girlfriend I've ever had. It's not obvious, I used to be one of the heavy smearers – I'd spend whole nights sprawled on couches while opium-methadone bubbled in my blood. And it's not my fault, I was restless because of my mental disorders. The worst of them, even more than my beloved OCD, happens in the sensitive and dissociative moments of deceptive derealization. Everything feels devoid of emotional color and depth, as if I'm walking in a dream or virtual reality, wandering among you, fictitious people. I feel like Descartes, except for the thought narrating in my head, everyone is experienced as unreal and Untrustworthy..
And Dante's Inferno pales in comparison to this hell. This is the climax of the transition season, and God in heaven - I want to cry over all this pure torment. You feel as if you're about to go mad or become psychotic, but your sense of reality remains completely intact. And this creates immense, immense suffering because you are fully aware of every second, minute, and hour of what is happening to you. Like Sisyphus who rolled the immense boulder up the mountain only to reach the summit and watch it fall back down, at least he had summits. Like waking up from anesthesia in the middle of surgery, completely paralyzed, and being tortured under the surgeons' knife now cutting into your living flesh.
Opium-methadone and uninhibited sex. And acid. Because there are things more terrible and satanic than the dangers of addiction and self-destruction. And the soul moans, moans under the stench, the violence, and the wastefulness of the internal combustion engine. My soul is dazed, and my eyes are hazed, and a few days ago someone bit my lip in the heat of the moment, and I tasted the iron flowing down my throat, and it definitely tasted good to me, but I didn't tell anyone about it lest I be considered insane.
Today I wandered around the neighborhood a bit. Down the street, on a low stone fence, I saw a sad woman who reminded me a bit of myself, sitting in the company of an empty cardboard box and staring into it. I wanted to approach her and talk about the ailments of the world, because I knew that she and I shared the same feelings, and only we would truly understand what each other was going through. Such a misery was in her gaze, how her entire body language screamed - "leave me alone". One reaches such a place perhaps only after years of real suffering; and only now realized that that's it, she can't go on, she will no longer be accepted into the company of the normals. She was already past the age when it's possible to start anew. I felt with her, as mentioned, a sort of fellowship in fate, but sometimes I judge others by an internal and unique code that is mine alone, and maybe she was actually happy and from a warm home, I don't know.
Opium-methadone, and I feel like tearing myself apart with slaps or scratches. To feel how the flesh is deeply gouged by the nails until a bleeding crater is created. Afterwards, I'll dig there with a fountain pen, and what a beauty - a new tattoo. Also, I feel like beating another person to a pulp, to make him feel what I feel every day. How much rage I store here. Then I'd offer him opium. There's a thing with this substance where you're not sure if it's affecting you or not, so you reinforce every few minutes until suddenly everything comes into order and your brain starts leaking through your ears, you begin to hear the creation of the world in reverse and all the angels respond amen. If you add ecstasy for dessert, you'll start to erotically embrace the street lamps. But it's dangerous and hard to break this chain because the ecstasy produces such a down that you immediately need to find some drug for immediate consumption so that the down won't swallow you forever.
If I break up with my girlfriend, I will never again date prudes or conservatives. I love the real women of life, cheap yet with a glorious pelvis, IQ at the expense of sex appeal. Usually, they flow with my anomalous existence. I especially love girls from good homes looking for dark adventures to tell their future grandchildren. I am the Messiah of the feed, the fulfiller of wishes. That's what they think. Then I sober up, the thought fades as it came - I will no longer live with those whose existence contradicts mine. No one benefits from such a relationship.
Derealization, and again I'm shaken between sanity and madness, disconnected from the external environment, as if something separates me from the world around. Familiar places suddenly look alien, strange places momentarily appear surreal. Beautiful women turn ugly, well-wishers to soul seekers, motivation to mania, smell to taste. Opium to methadone.
My partner hasn't cried because of me or for me in several months, my mother for a year and two months. My father, for much longer. Opium-methadone, and my soul is torn.
He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother
by Wilkinson Riling
There is a quote from French dramatist Jean Baptiste Legouve, "A brother is a friend given by nature." I can say from experience, nature went out of her way to provide to me the best friend, the best brother, a person can have. It would be years later when cruel fate would override that process of natural selection with the indifference of a random accident.
We were two years apart, my brother Richard and I, but I can tell you we had a deep connection I've heard only exists among twins. Physically, for all the similarities, there were significant differences. Richard was taller, I was leaner. Richard was muscular, where I was slight. Richard was left handed, I was right. Richard was outgoing and personable, I leaned towards being introverted. The one trait we both possessed was we could look at each other and know in that instant what the other was thinking. With just a glance we could detect in one another our thoughts, mood, veracity, anxiety, needs and most of all humor. That was the one super power he had over me. He could make me laugh anytime he wanted, and often did.
When we were kids we had a basement my Dad had refurbished with a tile floor, drop ceiling and wood paneling. Pop even put a TV in the back wall when the first remote controls came out. The basement was a man cave long before they were ever known as man caves. Speaking of caves, when you closed the main door and covered up the basement window, it was black as pitch in the cellar.
The neighborhood kids would come over to play a game of "Tag in the Dark." The person who was "It" would step out of the room and count while everyone scurried for hiding places. That person, after reaching "ten Mississippi," would turn off the light, enter and have to search in the darkness to find the next person to be "It."
My brother never bothered searching for anyone else, he just would start calling out my name in a funny voice and wait to hear my stifling giggles. I tried so hard not to laugh one time, I wet my pants. So, when he tagged me and the lights came up, I was not only "It," I was pissed, because he made me the focal point of much childhood derision. But I knew then as I know now, all's far in a game of "Tag in the Dark."
My brother had a softer side to him as well. When we were kids we shared a room and a bed. Around Christmas time we both liked having a back scratch. When we gave each other a back scratch there was always an argument who went first. Because if you were the first scratcher, then you, as the scratchee, could fall asleep after. Without a clock we had to figure out how to time the length of the back scratch. So, we used the Christmas standard, "Silent Night." The back scratch would last only as long as the first two stanzas of the carol. Richard always got to give me a back scratch first, leaving me half asleep to finish up. I still remember my seven-year-old voice cracking on the high notes of the lyrics encouraging one to sleep in heavenly peace and finishing with my brother asleep in what could only be described as such.
I smoked my first cigarette with my brother. I was around ten. We would go behind our garage along with my brother's friend Scotty. We took turns puffing and try not to cough on a Winston cigarette Scott stole from his mother. Our garage was backed up against a small hill that divided our block from the street behind us. This hill gave us easy access to the garage roof where we would practice our delinquency. On this particular day, we were racing to climb up to the garage roof. Scott and I took the well travelled back route.
My brother had a better idea. My father had left a ladder out, unbeknownst to us, Richard set it up in front of the garage and started to climb. Scott and I arrived on back of the roof just as Richard's arms came over the opposite end of the garage followed by his grinning face. He had that smile on his face thinking he surprised us with his ingenuity. It took less than a second for that smile to be replaced by a look of fear and regret. The ladder slipped out from under him and he disappeared from view. I don't remember hearing him scream, I do remember the sound of crashing glass.
Scott and I ran up to the edge of the roof and looked down. The image is burned into my brain like a color daguerreotype. The edges may be faded, but all the consequential parts clear and visible. Richard lay splayed on his stomach perpendicular to the fallen ladder and surrounded by shards of glass from a broken window. He was wearing short pants. His left leg was cut open at the calf with a four inch wide vertical tear that ran from just below the knee to just above the ankle. There was a pool of blood around the area of his leg. I could see the white of his bone protruding out from the canal of blood held in his place by a levee of skin.
I don't ever recall being more clear of thought. I remembered our neighbor had been working in his garage. I jumped off the back of the garage and ran through the neighbor's hedges, I told my neighbor that Richard needed help. The neighbor ran over with rags to use as a tourniquet. I didn't follow. Instead, I ran down the driveway and up the street. This happened on a Saturday afternoon. I recalled that another neighbor up the street always had her father over for a late afternoon spaghetti dinner on Saturday. Moreover, I remembered her father was a doctor. I got the old man away from his Italian dinner and to bring his medical bag. I pushed him down the street imploring him to hurry and to save my brother.
The doctor had clean bandages and gave my brother a shot of something just as the emergency vehicle showed up. In the end, Richard required over seventy stitches and had to work to rebuild muscle in his leg. It only served to make me aware of how accident prone my brother could be. I've heard it suggested because he's left handed as the reason, but I believe it's because he was fearless. He remained so even after taking that fall.
My brother went on to become of all things, a roofer. Talk about tempting the fates. He started his own roofing company which became locally very successful and well respected. I pursued a career that took me to the West coast. Whenever I'd come back to visit over the years we'd rib each other about our childhood exploits, whether wetting pants or falling off ladders, to any weight gain that we managed to accumulate over the years. Even though we both put on the pounds, Richard would always smile and say, "Bill, you ain't heavy, you're my brother." The line was taken directly from the 1969 hit from the Hollies, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." It would become our theme song.
In 1989 I was at work at my desk in California. The phone rang. It was my father. He told me Richard had an accident. "Please don't tell me he's gone, Dad." He wasn't, but it didn't look good. I flew home that evening. My brother had fallen after a chicken ladder snapped in half causing him to slide off a three story roof. He struck a car and then hit the pavement head first. A chicken ladder is a homemade wooden support that allows a roofer to walk perpendicular to a slanted roof. This gave out causing Richard's fall.
The first day I arrived at the hospital and saw him, Richard's head looked swollen to the size a beach ball, tubes and wires stuck in and on him like tentacles draping from an electronic squid. I got to hold his hand and let him know I was there but I have no idea if he heard me. I spent the day bedside and whispered to him stories from our childhood.
On the second day, I am left with another color daguerreotype in my brain. My father and I were visiting Richard. We were talking in low tones at the base of his bed. Without warning, Richard bolted straight up in bed, eyes wide open, staring directly at us, his left hand reaching out to us as if he wanted us to grab his hand and stop him from falling. It was and is, the scariest thing I ever saw in my life. Because I had no idea what to do. Nor did my father, because we banged into each other trying to move out of the room and call for a doctor. Richard was pulling at tubes and cables and stretching all the wires clipped to him. The doctor and nurses scrambled and settled him down, but I can never forget the fear I saw in my brother's eyes and the helplessness I felt. The doctor said Richard might have been reliving the fall in his mind. Add to that, what my father must have been going through and it was all beyond my emotional imagination.
The third day remains the most incredible for me, because it contains elements of life's mysteries causing me to question my very sanity and issues of life after death. I can play back bits and pieces in my head like a tick tok video, so let me time stamp it for you.
It was March, 13th, 1989. 7:30 a.m. an early Spring morning. The sun had risen above neighborhood rooftops. I'm sitting in Richard's hospital room with his wife. We're letting Richard know we're there. I'm speaking in low tones because I don't want to excite him and repeat the previous day. His wife is gently stroking his forehead. A nurse barrels into the room like Mary Tyler Moore on prozac and loudly proclaims, "Good morning, Richard, it's a beautiful day!" She opens the blinds to let in more sunlight. "Spring is in the air! The tulips are in bloom and your family is here and they love you very much!"
I asked the nurse how he slept through the night. She smiled saying he had such a good quiet evening, no seizures. She again reminded us it was a beautiful day and left. I turned to my brother's wife and smiled. "I think he's going to be okay. I'm going to call Dad." I went to a nearby pay phone, fished out a quarter from my pocket. My Dad picked up in one ring. "Dad, Billy. Richard slept through the night, no seizures. He even looks better. Dad, I think he's going to be okay." Those words no sooner left my lips when I heard the intercom. "Code Blue, Code Blue, Code Blue."
"Dad, get down here, now!" I had a sinking feeling I hope I never feel again.
I ran back to my brother's room, it was already crowded with an emergency staff. My brother's wife was against the opposite wall in the hallway looking in, but it was hard to see anything except the backs of the doctors and nurses working on Richard. The patient room right next to my brother's room was empty, so I stepped up to the doorway to get an angled view of them working on my brother. They were doing CPR and all the other emergency procedures we see on TV hospital dramas but this drama was real. Or was it?
There was a radio playing music in the empty room as they worked on my brother. The radio was playing a song. It was a song by the Hollies. "He Ain't Heavy He's my Brother" was playing as my brother was dying. I started to think I was in a bad dream, not quite a nightmare. This can't be happening. But it was. For four minutes and nineteen seconds I listened to that heart breaking song watching as my brother's life ebbed away. To add to the mystery of the moment, the next song that the radio played was Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now." His wife later told me that was their song. Was that Richard saying goodbye to us? Was it just an amazing coincidence? Was my brain seeking connections to help me deal with the trauma of the moment? I don't know. It haunts me to this day.
As the song says... the road is long with many a winding turn that leads us to who knows where? But if I'm strong, strong enough to carry him, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.
I carry my brother in my heart.
Resignation from the Absurdly Literary Position
Dear Dick,
I hope this letter finds you in a state of literary grace and grammatical correctness. It is with a heavy heart and a dictionary of synonyms that I tender my resignation from my position as Chief Wordsmith Extraordinaire, effective immediately.
Please understand that this decision was not reached lightly. It’s just that after spending countless hours crafting metaphors, similes, and puns, I’ve come to the conclusion that my true calling lies in the lucrative world of competitive Scrabble. I feel that my talents are better suited to arranging tiles on a board than rearranging words in a document.
I will fondly remember the days spent debating the Oxford comma, arguing over the pronunciation of “gif,” and trying to sneak “onomatopoeia” into every memo. However, my ambitions now lie beyond the confines of this office, where the only punctuation I’ll be worrying about is whether or not the triple word score was worth sacrificing all my vowels.
I assure you, this decision is not a reflection of the stimulating workplace environment or the copious amounts of coffee provided. It’s simply that I’ve grown tired of searching for the perfect synonym for “exhausted” and yearn for a challenge that involves more than just battling writer’s block.
I appreciate the opportunities for growth and creativity that this position has afforded me, and I will always cherish the memories of our team’s literary shenanigans. Please know that I leave with the utmost respect for you and the entire team, and I wish everyone continued success in all their future endeavors.
Thank you for your understanding, and may the pen forever be mightier than the sword (unless we’re playing Scrabble).
Yours literarily,
Mamba
Firelight
“I suppose I did
love her,” Braelyn said.
A log crackled, spit
glowing flecks against
the dark. She might have
had more to say, but
not to us.
I sat with Ashley in
tree-broken moonlight
watching her sister,
drinking. Ashley leaned
close, shared my jacket
while the fire fell. We
cooked nothing and told
no stories. We sat with
Braelyn, watching embers
fade to ash.
March 11, 2024