The Thirst Unquenched
The cuff
of the shirt sleeve
crusted beyond dignity
and the gods left
another link
for me
a break, in desert heat
metal on metal
There upon the old geolwe
That water pressure keeper
for EMT capped
the Sun, yellowed
and now faded
into dark,
a step away
from Emergency
Slow, that broken-thought
was the message
stumbled on,
not for naught...
'Open' with an arrow
turning in,
That was the Word...
permanently Embossed
2024 MAR 27
The Fleeting Cup
It was a Good Friday kind of day. A mass we always wanted to skip. The one where the congregation is urged to shout "Crucify him! Crucify him!" to further compound the fact and bring home the disgust, at having a human hand that reaches that far back with killer's blood coursing there just beneath the fingernails.
Gulls screech above, circling confusedly like buzzards. Bottle caps, shells, and those six-pack rings that choke the wildlife, poke between the toes, on an aimless walk. The debris upon the beach, washed up is unremarkable, except for one that toys with memory, if not imagination. It's these action figure legs, jackknifed into the landscape. Anonymous, yet familiar. The camo pants, the combat boots.
We know him, like our own reflections. Like childhood. Like John Doe. Joe.
I'm so far removed from the board walk. It's sunlight and amusements on a film strip. The ants unrelated to me. Eating, laughing, and recreating the impression of Life. It's colors. The wind takes all their marching on, farther into the distance, and the greater gusts obscure my immediate footprint. My past insignificance highlighted in the glare of sand. Dark clouds, blazed from the underside where the sun has slid around and stuck its tongue out.
I can feel two quarters clanking in my shorts. Not gonna get me much. Not even hot or cold coffee these days. I approach closer to the G.I. Joe, I can see his torso's stuck in a cup. Styrofoam. Figures. A tenacious trap that won't decompose, and will leave him locked in that sinkhole, like a laughable foot soldier. Arms locked. All the more disposable. The good guy.
Rain makes a mockery of us both. His cup now full and stained with old grind residue. Darkness pools around the waist and on impulse I flick a coin to dislodge the legs. I don't know why I feel like he should get his head out of the sand or something. But I won't lean down to pluck the figure out. My clothes are dotting with cold drops, and my fingers slip. I miss. Just slightly, the soft edge rejects the metal and sends it back to land at my big toe. It stings. It doesn't hurt really. But I'm crying all the sudden.
It's just a thing, and then it isn't. Empty.
Show us, then, the wind whistles.
It's white on white on white. A glare.
"What's your name?" Bobby. Joe.
"Where you from?" Under the lamp arm.
"Which division?" First. From reality.
"It's a game. It's only a game."
"Bobby Joe, play with us."
"You be this one."
"Pow pow."
Teeth. White, on white.
Smile. Wince.
"Bobby?"
"It's only a game..."
"He's going to get up again."
"Right?"
"Bobby? Joe?"
"Galvanized iron."
"What?"
"Government issued."
"Not Gen Infantry?"
"No. Issue."
"Bobby Joe?"
White noise.
"Do you hear?"
"General issue."
"He's not responding..."
White on white, sheet.
There's the clouds. The soulless beach. There's reality I know nothing about.
This sad forgiveness that hangs heavy. A grain of sand like a boulder.
An empty shroud. A smear.
We were playing. We were just playing, until we weren't.
03.25.2024
Legless man Prose Fantasy Challenge for March @Prose
Jane’s Addiction, being a dog, feathery tops in the valley, and everything that follows.
Premiering now: In number seventeen from Prose. Radio, Jane's Addiction sees the ocean break on the shore, while in the city a group of writers from the site bring it back to soil with each of their own literary footprints.
Here's the link to the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U33WX-dLTZ4
And here are all the pieces in the feature:
https://www.theprose.com/post/808204
https://www.theprose.com/post/807185/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/785150/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/783763/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/806394/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808549/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808564/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808547
https://www.theprose.com/post/808080/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808371/...
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
मलम्
The World as Word.
I look at the word.
Stoicism.
Stoa, the Greek root. It reminds me of extensions, in various languages, even code, where the stoi makes hidden figures...
I understand the etymology stems from the "hall" where orators stood or sat, and contemplated aloud after sitting long; in silence, looking in.
Stoic reminds me of stołek [St'Oh'EK] and stoł [St'ew] meaning footstool, and table, respectively, as translated in Polish and in other slight variants of Slovik languages.
That seat, and table, kitchen and workbench like, remind me of Sanskrit texts, heavy with the notion of action in inaction. It has in my interpretation much to do with living through consequences, without actually enacting them. Painting a moving picture with the most dynamic, sophisticated, and time sensitive media, of the mind: while sitting, and doing nothing.
https://youtu.be/FDmPcSWE0WU?si=FRLhlzqyVV9hg8Vw
It reminds, how we carry so much more, inside, than our hands ever will and that through mental exercise muscles in our arms and legs are somehow fortified to endure what, little, by comparison, is allotted... knowing it could be so much heavier, for us, and, or, for others.
Stoicism is perhaps the natural disposition of thinking man. It is why it is felt as tao, a way of life much like Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are neither philosophy, nor religion, yet nevertheless there is the element of Faith.
I can't help but wonder whether those who succumb to "art" of any sort, are in a way rent stoics, having been unable to hold their internal load, pouring it out instead, in visual, auditory or kinesthetic form. I can't write failed, though that is the term that comes to mind. I write rend, in past tense, as a borrowing of life from Life.
Seeing how the World is ever in that precarious balance of making and unmaking.
The hallmark of the Stoic is to seldom talk, and when silence is broken, the thoughts are drawn from a reservoir of contemplation, a wealth of deep passion and internal suffering. The holy indifference, that whatever is, is as if one step removed from us. The little that is said, emerges like a boa, from the knot in the tree, internally... Slides around the shoulders like a warm muffler, curling about the throat, with tacit acknowledgement that any false movement may result in fatal constriction....
So, it is best perhaps, to sit, still, remembering we will slip from the manacle, soon enough, from one unknown, to another.
Customers Only
Time is a magazine
an empty clip
the invisible hand
at the end of it
having released
the lock
and now
we hear
the
drip
drip,
drip...
mistaken
for tick, tick,
mortality in the gears
stuck, twists:
"I'd rather,
a revolver,
than a semi
automatic..."
but beggars,
are stalled,
as they say...
on the outside
of it...
2024 MAR 22
We don’t Know.
That is the most honest thing to say.
I made a pact with someone passed, that whichever of us should go first, we would show a sign, if there were some means of communicating from the other side. When the fatal moment arrived, I thought surely, I would be haunted to the end of my life.
Contrawise. Though, I had this strange sensation of absorbing the passing spirit that night--waking in a baptismal kind of sweat through every pore of my body.
The cut, since then, has been as if final. God knows I am all too adept at making shit up. What do we call it? --"self-gaslighting"---?!
No such thing. Perhaps I have failed to see. Maybe the timing is not right, for a sign. Maybe that Individual consciousness is still alive and knows that it would harm more than comfort, if sighted.
Or maybe, the door is barred. Or there really is, Nothing at all...
We just don't know.
Slay it Again
is it the musical nature of Man?
to try to keep
within
syncopated beat
and against
it
measure
success,
or defeat...
how we go
up or down,
or hover, around
aimlessly
jammed,
in the streets
tunnning
to a rhythm
in the buried sea
chest,
where the meter
is
not yet in sync
...the rest
of the band
distant,
as in a dream
heard,
before it's seen
and
slapped !
upon the cheek
when alarm
beeps---
It's Time
whatever that means
03.21.2024
"Clocks slay time" challenge @dctezcan
rain, rain don’t go away
woke up to sunny new skies
dark clouds whisked away by the winds
the coming winds of change
good change
holy tides
washing ashore
ebbing away dross
and the scum of tainted
earth
the changing of the guard
by liars who stole power
under the nose of pilgrims
who came to this nation
and founded it
stolen by extortionists
bribers
political thieves
who've raped the constitution
insidious change from Republic
under God
to so called democracy
ruled by so called elitist government
muddied intentionally
and the scum of tainted
by the wicked
hidden amongst the innocent
like those who want to destroy
who work to destroy
New York city
and California
and Arizona
almost every state
they've stolen
wake up with the wind
and the rain that comes and falls
and the floods
the quakes,
tornadoes
hurricanes
volcanoes
the rains
from out of nowhere
drenching coolly
quietly
stealthily,
did you catch that?
the cleansing continues
washing away the sins of the
fake news
lamestream media
revealing the hidden smokescreens
run and directed by enemies of the state
you know
the Jesus haters
the illuminati
yes, devil worshippers
working to overtake America
stay rains
come snow
go and come back
again and again
and stay
until all is washed away
just like in the days of Noah
and the parting of the red sea
Still meant. Forward and Back Again.
Maybe I don't Prose as I used to.
Maybe The Prose. doesn't Prose. like it did
Moving the dot like a goal post, maser-ed
Neither left nor right.
Deeper, into the dark
Like a button, meant
to turn on the Light
03.20.2024
How do you 'The Prose'? challenge @Plexiglassfruit