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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.