The Man Beneath the Bridge (Challenge)
He sits there under the bridge hoping to gather dust beneath the nail like it's some fingerprint of existence or some shit. He used to be important and in some ways still is. He's quite wealthy. Just gave up a bit. Left it all in some fuckin mental break or something to find the meaning of it all. It pisses me off sometimes, but like a car crash I can't look away. Or stop thinking about it. Half pissed I work my ass off to buy food to survive and half impressed that there's someone out there that gave up everything by choice. He just sits there and looks at a mural someone painted under the bridge when they were probably stoned or high. I think he's searching for some color that never existed. Maybe some special meaning buried in a spray can-typo. For some dumbass reason it gives me hope. Maybe for all my struggles I'm missing something beautiful. Maybe he's just a crazy, senile asshole that does this for fun. I don't know. Gave him a dollar once. Asshole didn't even look up. Just took it. He probably won't even fuckin buy booze with it, which is a bit insulting. I'd buy booze with it. What the fuck else would I do? But this asshole seems to need nothing. Maybe I'll join him one day and see whatever it is he stares at so intently. Or maybe he'll just be dead tomorrow and this fixation will have been for nothing but a midlife crisis. I just know when I wake up thirty minutes before I'm ready tomorrow, and sip half shit coffee to go make someone I've never met money, this cocksucker will wake up whenever the hell he wants and look at a wall. Just because he wants to. And I'll feel like a dick for not dropping a dollar on my way home, thinking it's the right thing for him to taste my morning disappointment. He won't. But a dollar buys my sanity sometimes. And one day, I won't see him. He'll just be gone. And I hope I get there first, so I can look without anyone around at this dumbass graffiti he's so taken by. There's still a bit of color coming through. Maybe hope lies within the concrete. Maybe that picture of something so common will look like what I had all along. Or maybe I'll fuck a whore in front of it out of spite. Maybe the asshole I've become was what he gave it all up to avoid. I'm just jealous of the person buying paint right now.
Suggestion
A prose discord would be amazing for collaboration and interaction. May also serve ad an advertising stream to direct traffic here. Just a thought.
She’s Kind of Fuckin Amazing
She's leaning out against hope
Again
Suspended
Above the impossible
With those 3 stray hairs
Mindlessly framing
My future
She trips over
Her dreams as she recalls them
Worried about these imaginary
Failures
That whip behind her
Like ribbons
While she rises
And it seems the total
Of her regrets
Have become an arrow
Pointing her away
From
The nightmare I never met
That never really existed.
Her heartbeat kind of sways
Like dreams wrapped in
Doubt
And it's fucking beautiful
And I'm cursing the clouds
Again
And praying for a mirror
Big enough to reflect
the view
And I wonder if the sun
Ever sees itself fall
As it sets beyond the shore
Or how I would feel
If I carried such a burden
So I will hunch
Over the page
And write within the shadows
Of myself
As I follow her into tomorrow,
Begging, that dimly lit lines on a page
Will somehow become
Reflection
She is,
Lying pretty
Beneath the paper.
Like some echo
Of the next line
That says it all.
And I'm inkblot-Lovesick
And scribbling random words
That make no sense
But look like
What she makes me feel
When I hear them.
My muse.
And she smiles
When I get like this,
So lost for words
Because I can't grab
Enough of them.
She loves it. To see me speechless for once.
And I have a knife and
An alphabet
And I'm carving out her outline
On the page.
Hoping I can swim
Within the ink
Before it dries,
So I can find the thought of her
within myself and beneath the page
And push her face
To the surface.
And her outline will have been
The best of everything my pen
Has ever offered.
And she is snuggled sweet
Between the words
I haven't found yet,
Diving off the tip of
My thoughts
Down into me.
And like water.
I will break.
And splatter.
And ache.
And eventually.
Go back together,
Like holding her.
Like the splash reattaching,
Waves becoming still
As I hold her tight.
My future is the breach
She makes
To breathe again.
And breaks me open
As she rises from the deep.
And she makes ripples
Move out like hope
Into the future.
And I still can't capture her.
She remains beneath the ink.
Still waiting to be seen,
I keep drawing her outline.
With my words.
But the shadow I cast,
Will be her blanket.
Her
She's getting ready
In the morning
And she's frustrated.
It's fucking adorable.
I wonder if I could sell
This view
The heart-stop beauty of it.
And bottle the feeling
Of seeing her face crinkle
Because that one strand of hair
Won't obey.
Then she giggles
When it falls into place,
And my next week
Will be recalling this moment.
And we go out so the wind
Can fuck everything up
In an instant.
And I am again grateful
Because nature
Created an expression
On her face
I haven't seen yet.
The beauty of life's chaos
Has made me whole
Prose
I love prose like an old lover I can't help but revisit. I do miss a couple old features. The weekly artist spotlight desperately needs to make a comeback. I also miss the option to read through a stream of people I'm following; I could at one point do this, and it made a "follow" mean a bit more. I think the loss of those two things hinder the sense of community we used to have here. That being said, Prose on the whole is fucking brilliant by both execution and intention.
Inevitable Existence
The gate
That keeps me from falling.
Off the cliff.
I loosen the screws
Holding it together, like
going home.
There is only 1 outcome.
I was grateful.
The View.
Challenge (Say Hi, Prose Census)
Hello fuckers. There are very few left who still remember that intro. Lol. I've been here since almost the beginning. Shout out to all those who remember Sammie and Paul. That's not a lack of respect for A and Jeff. You two keep building this place and moving forward. Kudos. Also, if you haven't recently, please post an origins of Prose story, it's a pretty damn good story. I'm not on much anymore. Partly because my writing is at a crossroads and I'm gunshy. Partly because I miss a lot of people and it's not quite the same. I remember a big city with a small town feel, where people that freckled the entirety of the globe became friends. Also, shit happens. But Prose will always feel like home, and I'll never stop coming back. So, to the founders of something that can't be quantified, Jeff, A, fucking cheers and thank you for having a dream that was bigger than yourselves. Even those who simply pop in and leave have been made better because of a "cheers." So cheers. Fuckers.
Cancel Culture Challenge
Let's all
Cancel ourselves
From the career
Called
"being right"
I'll see you
At the farewell party.
Anyone that offends
Me,
I'll buy the next round.
Thank God
I might be wrong.
On anything.
Or everything.
Or nothing.
Just so long
As my opinion
Is a chapter
And not
A memoir.