Tonight @Shells called for a Discord Zoom Write and I am so grateful I was able to accommodate. @Ferryman and @Putski joined and @MeeJong hosted. We started with a word list generated from the theme "Movement" and each contributed three words then each wrote a piece with the theme "Stillness" which incorporated as many of the words in the word list as we could. We then each wrote for ten minutes individually, shared those pieces and chose one piece to write collaboratively to finish.

Here is the word list:

Flow

Leap

Transient

Cabbage Patch

Susurration

Run

Skip

Hokey Pokey

Murmuration

March

Fly

Mashed Potato

And here is the writing:

10-Minute Individual Writes:

Mee Jong

It was midnight when I got the call. The night was dark and stormy, which is both cliche and 100% true. It was that transient time of year when it felt like winter one day and spring the next, then back to winter. Sometimes, both within one day. But I digress.

Everyone remembers those moments which shock their lives into stillness. For me the biggest one was the call on that dark and stormy winter-spring night-morning. I was deep in a dream about being the one starling in the murmuration who was out of sync. Humans were below oohing and aahing and then they saw me and a susurration went through the crowd, what’s wrong with that one? It’s so out of sync, isn’t it?

It was like the bird version of me doing any of the dances my peers were doing. It didn’t matter if it was the Cabbage Patch, Hokey Pokey or Mashed Potato, I was always a step behind or ahead. I couldn’t even do the damn twist.

Man. The call. I swear I’m getting to it. So the call comes in, I was not asleep. I never am at midnight, except on New Year’s Eve when I am supposed to be and everyone else is. Oppositional defiant to the end I guess. But yes, the call. They tell me there has been a terrible accident. Could I get to the Emergency Room as soon as possible? My husband is in critical condition.

I couldn’t take the moment to let my emotions flow. I tried to run to the car but it felt like I was walking backwards. I wished fervently I could turn time backwards, but it wasn’t a movie and I wasn’t a superhero who could affect time.

Ferryman

The murmuration stops mid-flow, holding perfectly in the air above. My heart leaps into my throat, and I expect it to skip a beat, but there’s nothing. No panicky feeling of a hollow chest, no shallow breaths taken in near-gasps. All is frozen, motionless. Shadows don’t creep along singed grass, but they stand stock-still as if marched in and stood at attention.

I notice a fly, as if preserved in amber, perched in a pool of my blood.

I want nothing more than to run away from this nightmare in daylight, but this thought is transient, fleeting, dancing away towards the edge of my awareness.

Nothing moves but my eyes, and that’s when I notice him. He stands tall, shrouded in black, flowing towards me without his feet ever landing in the soil of the cabbage patch he moves through.

I feel more than hear a susurration; the air begins to vibrate with a dread I know instinctively.

This thing is here for me, in this place not so far from my home. Slava Ukraini, they said when I volunteered.

As terrified as I am, I take comfort in the fact that those who lie near me will never see Moscow again.

Putski

I leapt at the disco ball hovering over the floor.

Flying against all odds I cannot reach my goal.

Missing my mark, I perform the hokey pokey on roller skates.

A transient move at best.

Marching forward a susurration distracts my retreat.

I skip across the creek to leap upon the far shore.

My murmuration lost to the flow of the water.

Running into the night,

I celebrate my escape by dancing the mashed potato.

Shells

There was a flow of smoke, just a voided mind. I was staring at the skies, lost in the void. Of the dawn Colliding with the lost moments of midnight and you and stolen moments.

Just fading scenes of whispered words and transient dreams. Roadside bars and vacancy signs against a bleak interstate nod

We were on the run and laughing. Just a leap of faith against a naysayers nod. We smiled as they told us no, a hokey-pokey kinda song and dance. Just you and me...

And a J45 with a broken string.

Group Write in Full (I made slight edits as I was reading through to make the final post but nothing substantive to anything I didn't write, merely slight grammar corrections):

It was midnight when I got the call. The night was dark and stormy, which is both cliche and 100% true. It was that transient time of year when it felt like winter one day and spring the next, then back to winter. Sometimes, both within one day. But I digress.

Everyone remembers those moments which shock their lives into stillness. For me the biggest one was the call on that dark and stormy winter-spring night-morning. I was deep in a dream about being the one starling in the murmuration who was out of sync. Humans were below oohing and aahing and then they saw me, and a susurration went through the crowd, what’s wrong with that one? It’s so out of sync, isn’t it?

It was like the bird version of me doing any of the dances my peers were doing. It didn’t matter if it was the Cabbage Patch, Hokey Pokey or Mashed Potato, I was always a step behind or ahead. I couldn’t even do the damn Twist.

Man. The call. I swear I’m getting to it. So, the call comes in, I was not asleep. I never am at midnight, except on New Year’s Eve when I am supposed to be awake because everyone else is up waiting for the ball to drop. Oppositional defiant to the end, I guess. But yes, the call. They tell me there has been a terrible accident. Could I get to the Emergency Room as soon as possible? My husband is in critical condition.

I couldn’t take the moment to let my emotions flow. I tried to run to the car, but it felt like I was walking backwards. I wished fervently I could reverse time, but it wasn’t a movie, and I wasn’t a superhero who could affect the flow of time.

When I finally got to my car door, it wouldn’t open. I fumbled my keys and recovered them twice, but on the second recovery, the world spun beneath my feet. I stood still and earth moved on.

Driving would be beyond me, since standing was a challenge. My sister took my keys, and together we headed towards the hospital.

One misplaced sob, and we're all dead! That's what echoed in my head. I know she was once removed from the grief, but the experience was the same. You have to control and suppress and get done what needs to get done. I simply watched the passing lights from the passenger seat. The thoughts in my head reeling between what was and what could never be again. The ride lasted 10 lifetimes. I just remember stumbling out of the door in the parking garage and signing in at the desk.

***

I'm calling your name but you can't hear me. Maybe, muffled versions of verses I can't hear. I felt the throw, the initial ditch, just a toss from here to there and I'm calling your name...just silence and panic and spider web windshields and I'm fighting to find you and it's static and a.m. stations and I'm calling for my wife and it's blank now and just you and me and....

...stillness. I'm moving, but my body isn't. I looked to see if I am strapped to a gurney or hospital bed, but I'm not. No straps. But I cannot lift my arms. I cannot move my legs. I want to panic, I want to scream, but a nurse catches my eye in that moment, and suddenly I am in a dream. I am an ant, marching in the wrong direction. Away from the anthill. I want to go back to the safety of the formicary. My legs continue to move me away.

***

I’m not ready to face truth. I’m not ready to face anything. My whole body says no, my mouth says nothing. I deny where I am, where we are, where he is, by simply moving in a direction beyond those automatic glass doors. If I refuse to speak, then these things must refuse to have happened.

I do not believe we can stop being whole because someone refuses to acknowledge a stop sign.

And yet, despite my protestations, there you are. Eyes flutter through the invasion of intubation. Every breath forced through man's machinations. If there is a God, did he inspire this? Our past lives allowed lions to eat us or wounds to kill us. This is Shelly's Frankenstein.

***

I called myself home and was met by nothing. I'm nothing without you, broke. Acid ranked escapes fade away.

Broken veins and broken hearts,

Crossroads found and abandoned.

No escape.

Tonight's prompt was based on the concept of pareidolia and there were three images from which to draw. Stemming from that, @shells, @ferryman, @meejong and @littlesunflower wrote the following:

Within the waves I saw the colors of the future. With certainty, they weren't the colors of the present. How do you even name a color that doesn't currently exist? It's like finding a picture faded to black and white of an era you can't possibly understand, but somehow do.

I've seen these colors before, cycling through the abyss. Dreams plagued me even before I was drawn to Arkham. This godforsaken town and this University have brought me into darkness. My nightmares flicker in black and white, then vibrant color, and I awake more tired than when I began. I'm not sure what made me take this job at Miskatonic, but my mind wandered when I audited a lecture yesterday, and I sketched a rosetta with a thousand eyes. "Be not afraid," echoed in my mind, and I laughed out loud. Afraid is all I am anymore.

I crouched in my arrogance. Crouched in my fear. Walked at from the loch with hunters and deer. There was nothing to stop me. No boundaries I'd found. Just a rite and a snort and a savior unbound.

Winding down the road, holding myself together, I nod at the people around me, my birds of a feather. They’ve shared my wounds, known that same fear, and felt a pain so shear and yet unclear. At one point I’d thought no one had been burned by death, but now I know better, I know that that white static tends to fill everyone’s ears. We hear it and yet we don’t, it makes the world spin and our heads float.

But what makes the time pass and our stomachs bloat? Is that the morass left to the unenlightened? The detritus left to those who don’t seek to be heightened? What is a world where colors are blended into one another in a nightmarescape for the woke? Where the only reasonable answer is one more toke?

It was after one more toke that I found myself staring off. My eyes unfocused, unseeing meeting the gaze of the unseen. I crested waves of my crossfade, only becoming aware of the cramp in my hand when the inkpen ran dry. I look down at the torn paper of a spiral notebook; my sketch digs several layers deep in the paper. The abyss stares up from Mead college ruled, and I hear the whispers of old gods and madness.

I want you to scratch through the layers. To move the built up paint aside. To see me through the static and white noise. And yet there is nothing but me and a silent wave of nothingness and regret.

I’d tried. I fought hard during the war. I’d sacrificed everything I could to make it through. And yet I still lost the one thing I sacrificed for you. I’d bled, and dealt with sweat, and defended myself from rats. I hoped I wouldn’t die and that I’d see you again after hell had retreated to the underground, but I came out of the trenches to find that the gods had gotten to you. You’d spilt their blood, ambrosia filling the nearby streams, you’d patched yourself up after the gods had watered the flowers with your insides in retaliation, but you didn’t survive. It wasn’t until years later that I’d found out how close you’d been. How close I was. If I was smarter and quicker to understand my surroundings you would be in my arms, but you’re not. My arms are empty, my body is cold, and my heart has stopped beating.

The colors bled from the world in that moment I realized my future could never look like I’d envisioned. What is survival in a world that looks so different from the one I fought to maintain. What is the next step when my heart beats so faintly, contemplating rows of data in place of souls. How can I move forward without hope. Am I? Without hope?

I once heard that hope floats. I believe that's true, but there's an asterisk on that. Bodies float, too. Until they don't. Maybe we're all floating, bloating, hovering between living and not. Maybe we're just different hues waiting to mix into new pigments, inevitably fading to gray. Is this what madness is? Blurred lines and a slurry of paints, reality twists and turns in a spiral and down we all go. Through it all, this place is my only constant. Fear is my only companion. Oblivion awaits and insanity abounds. Hope does float before it rots, and this place is rotten.

Modern modems of art and reality And faith.

Then merge together something akin to heaven and hell

Art and unreliable faith.

The colors faded. Drifting in and out

Potters and painters and nothingness in the bleak abyss of white noise and static and comfort. The pigments fade in and out with lysergic images of here and now.

And we find faith in nothingness and drink and drug and the final collapse of sanity and prosperity and pain.

This one we wrote after @Shells bowed out for the night so it was @MeeJong, @putski and @ferryman writing off of a word list we created through a free association exercise.

Prompt: Free Association Word List

Watermelon

Salt

Mines

Go

Fish

Tampa

Bay

Shrimp

There's nothing quite like home grown watermelon. Fuck that seedless crap they hand you in grocery stores. The seeds are how it reproduces. When you eat seedless watermelon, it tastes like some eunuch buried in the dirt. The seeds are the power and glory, especially when eaten under the full moon.

But what is a full moon when you’re in the mines? If you don’t have dreams, you can die down there. The darkness, the dank, the foreboding fucking canary. Being buried in dirt is a dream to a miner. You can dig your way out of dirt.

As I toil, my mind wanders to time spent in sunshine. I remember the two of us in Tampa, sunburned and lazy.

Just lying there, under the Sun. Getting our shrimp cocktails and mai tais, or whatever cocktail we were drinking. How far have we fallen? Cocktails and cocktails are replaced with coal dust and tepid water.

Yet we continue to drink. Pretending the sour taste in our mouths is the salt rim of a margarita. How much can you endure with an unending imagination? Unending abominations?

As my pick slams against the wall, I chase shadows and memories. I try to clear my mind, but the corners of my eye are constantly drawn to the monsters that are almost there. My paycheck is the hook, this work is the line, and I'm the fish, caught in the day in and the day out. Caught in a constant midnight.

Go! calls the captain, as we all run to board and prep the boats. Trying to eek a living as watermen. There are shrimp and fish and crabs to be found and caught and brought home.

Are we any different? The watermen from the miners? Is the danger any less? The conditions less cruel? The bowels of the earth or the bay, similar conditions, same pay. We all enjoy the home-grown watermelon just the same.

From a random pop-up Zoom writing workshop last night. Each participant chose a word in a foreign language and it was used in the title, body of the work or both. Participants were @MeeJong, @shells, @putski and @ferryman.

I said goodbye to you at midnight and watched the stars fade out of the sky. You fell away from the safety that encased you, I saw the pain fall into your eyes. You were distant and different, caught up in the fray.

I probably shouldn't have said good-bye on a hilltop. You fell and bounced down the dunes past the lane of the moonlight. Landing in a place separate from me, far down and away.

I stood observing, god-like on high. Watching until you became a speck of dust. Omniscient, I was not. I could not see that the strength you would nurture climbing back up the hill would eclipse my own. In the end, I needed you back and you needed only to move forward.

You'd just been lost in it all. Majestic words and untold tales. I was lost in your wonder. Something childlike and bold. I tucked into myself and drew in. And watched you move away from the safety of you and me. Encased in my entrails, I took a drink and let you learn.

Still on my golden hilltop, I watched. Dawn was waking and I could see your pink silhouette moving further and further beyond my grasp. Did you steal my manhood in your departure? Could I rediscover it without you? Would the lessons of being a singularity draw you back into my orbit?

Loyalty. I rolled the word around in my mouth and tasted it. It once felt like spaghetti - my comfort food - but now felt like black liquorice. Bittersweet. Was it I, with my gentle adios, that changed it? Or was it you, with your distractions and distance, prompting my goodbye, which changed it?

You took my soul and it changed. Some differential distance between you and I. I came to her and you came to me and I look back at her with longing and looked at you with a half-assed wink. A makeshift preservation of a manhood lost.

I left my perch on Olympus. I could no longer bear to watch you run away. I guess my manhood had to be found on my own. I started running the other direction. Serendipity would lead us to each other, or it would not. I'm not sure what I would find in the darkness, but it had to be better than idly observing the events.

I wandered out into my car to catch a moment of peace and gather my thoughts. Under the seat, I found a pistol, but I'm not sure who owns it. I wonder if there's a geist attached to this shiny nickel plating? Maybe this gleaming tool would help me find my own.

Or maybe this weapon was used to usurp another’s spirit. A geist heist. I don’t know where to look to find the truth but I know if I keep my eyes closed what I see will be true. Will it not?

I settled myself into the words of today and I recent and step away.

A very loose study of music metaphors.

There was music. Something distant and broken. The Southern air swayed in and out of the J-45. I could feel the breeze through the pines. A simple melody of the here and now. She was dancing as I watched. Slow and melodically, she was mine in that moment.

Felt like I was pawning minutes for miles to keep myself here. I should put distance between my eyes and the way light attaches to her silhouette, but I can't. I'll be lucky to get fifty percent of myself back by morning.

She opened her mouth and the rest of my life unfolded before me. Flashing the future like the past comes at you on your deathbed. How do I ever evaluate sound again when she broke the barrier between music and beauty, merging it into an impossible bar for others to surpass.

There were guitar strums that hit my soul. Something like my past and my collision. It was a car crash moment of me and you. Stuck with Chanel and weed and me and you. You tucked your head and said a phrase, something I wish I'd understood. Like whiskey and weed and you and me. I took a step back to the phrase to the mid between metaphors and here and I could see you just beyond the mess. Somewhere closer to the hair of the dog.

Like the first day of school, I had no choice and was just there. My heart followed the corner of her mouth as she smirked. My intention wrapped with it beyond the right thing into a shadow I can only paint in my dreams while the demons sleeping in her shadow turned to sunrise.

And what is sunrise without her beside me? The darkest of days in the coldest of ways. I will let the demon's creep; I can fight them in my sleep. What I need is the warmth of her eyes when they open. Her eyes are the future of sound. Weeping, the world floods, shining, the flowers blossom.

It was Calla lily dreams and your words. Something soulful and gone. She called me out and I called her down. Like a firefly dying on my hand, bittersweet endings and dying lights.

So, I will follow the beams until I understand the glitter on her cheeks. She's smiling again and I'm hesitant between the realms. This won't end well. She is like jumping into the void, terrifying and worth it. But there's a freckle on her cheek that looks like tomorrow.

And I understand that tomorrow is never guaranteed. Which is why my spontaneity will never recede. Do us, right now, as hard as we can. If we are meant to live, there is always narcan. We are the whole future in a line of right now.

Rebirth is something different, something like you should embrace. Death did his dance around me and found it wasn't his space. Cleansed from the despair, cleansed from repair. I settled in where I stood with an unearthly stare.

She looked back unaware of the fate she found. She's broken and smokin' and lost in time. I'm tracing her memory like ghosts in mine. This girl is sex at the cost of time.

But does time have a cost if admittance is free? How do you move forward when you are chained to the past? How do you remember if your only reference point is now?

How can your presence be calculated when your mind is trapped between the past and the future. Maybe this girl is just sex at the cost of mind.

She's daydream and nightmare and I'm probably blind. I'll lose all and be all to give her my time. I'm lost in brain; she consumes most of mine.

Product of the 12/10/2023 Prose Writing Zoom Workshop. The prompt was "A study of divergence and convergence". @Schatz, @Shells, @Ledlevee, @putski and @MeeJong each wrote a paragraph in a disorderly fashion until the story was purged from our collective minds.

I used walking as time to think. People asked why don’t I take a bus or catch a ride with a friend but the truth was, I relished the time I walked. I tuned in to the spaces around me and felt the day to day changes in my person. Some days felt light and happy and I practically skipped. Some days felt dark and heavy and I half ran to get to a safer place. But no matter what, the experience of walking the walk helped me feel connected in a way had trouble feeling otherwise.

It was so hard to feel connected when we first split apart. You were my soul mate, my other half. I didn’t know what I’d do without you. Especially with the bus fares going up. It was a time of darkness, split ends, and dread. I hate having split ends.

I watched you walk away. Bags in hand and teary eyed. You'd turned to look at me, a silent goodbye. The Greyhounds lights were blinding.

You told me our paths would converge again. You were so certain. But I felt nothing of that. I felt loss and emptiness and a void where I felt light and love and how does one reconcile that? I needed you like air. Now what would I breathe? Just this stale feeling of loss day after day ad infinitum?

So I turned to drugs and alcohol, downers mainly I scored in Kentucky. From the poor folk. ’Course I felt deep, dark, and lonely. Unconnected with life, disconnected with my self. Split ends ragged I call it. With and nothing left to lose, at least money that’s fer sure, I left Kentucky to sew my life back together.

The interstate was dismal. Dark and bleak and overwhelming. The passing cars hummed a song of broken dreams and broken hearts. Split ends that burned my soul. I wanted the ache inside me to stop, the heaviness inside took over and the exit sign drew me in. I pulled into the liquor Mart, did a line and went inside. The numbness overtook me and I knew I needed to run.

Can you ever outrun numbness? I tried, but the running brought more. Every exit, roadside stop, next hit, everything I tried brought me right back to where I started. Why does everything converge where I just want to split? Why can’t I forget the pain and find new joy? How do you create what you have lost when all you feel is destroyed?

’Least the coke was better than the trash crap I scored in Kentucky. Liquor Mart had a kick ass selection too. Not a bad exit choice really. Hair still looked like hell though, like a Hell Hair Kentucky Train Wreck.

The headlights drilled into my brain, addled with drug and drink. Your eyes were all I could see. The split ends converged into nothingness. The steady beat of Robert Johnson's blues echoed through the night air. I was too high to know the difference between here and there .

My mind has never allowed me real connection. Looking back the loves I thought I had were all forced, or lust disguised as love. And maybe now I’m too old to change that. So I’ll seal off the split ends with weed and broken dreams. With a shattered family and a split life. With glimpses of sex when I can find them. And I’ll fill my time with words and music and kids when I have them. Lost and spinning like a dervish. Barreling towards some unseen oblivion, some shadowy end hiding past the winter horizon.

But maybe a singular perspective is the divergence of reality. What if beginning to understand a more collective mind, to draw one’s own reality from more than just one’s own perspective, is the path to true understanding. What if I am not running away from things but toward a future that’s brighter than I can imagine right now?

So I decided to become a writer, a song writer that is.

This was my Entrez Vous (in A minor):r said he loved me

(Song missing) - there was a song, wasn't there @schatz?

Cocaine eyes and Mama's sordid smile. Roadside motels and haunted dreams. Random Fucks and Mr Walker kept me warm. I was lost out there. Cum stained words and missing parts. Like a ghost you held me. In some suspended sense of time and space and meaning. I fought the urge to call you. Humbled and on my knees. I walked and walked and walked until the clear numbness hit me...I couldn't out run us and the split ends grew longer and longer. Wrapping their tentacles around my heart, my spleen and my cunt.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the ghost. Like I’ve never really been alive. And I’ve faked life with alcohol at times, ecstasy, lsd, and weed. Cocaine and anything else I could get my hands on. Sex and sex and music and more sex. Poetry and words and more all night fucking. Sinking through the night and the morning into places and times no one should ever be. The surreal unrealities at the edges of perception.

At the next exit, the gas ran out. I began walking again. This time far from the city lights, far from the familiar. An old two gallon red plastic jug, with a reversible spout, a handful of change from the change holder, and a pair of worn shoes. That is all I had to continue on. Blow and bourbon and smoke got me to here. Sneakers, change, and hope would get me further. I don't even remember what the sign said near the exit. 2 miles, 5 miles, I can only hope it was the former. I trudged like a wounded warrior hoping for a ride from a Valkyrie. A thumb and gas can my only weapons to fulfill my mission.

Here’s where we find out whether fate is a whore or an angel. Or a combination of the two. A car slowed, eyed me up and down, and sped back up. I wondered whether I would even pick me up at this point. A motorcycle stopped. “Hop on, I’m getting gas anyway.” “Much obliged, Man, much obliged.” He stared at me for a second and then shrugged. I hopped on and wondered about fate.

He didn’t realize it, but he had shrugged at his demise. I jacked his ass and rode off on his cycle. Fucking Kawasaki. Found another exit to my liking, set down roots, and became a hairdresser. Damn sure good one too. Best in the county. No split ends ‘round here, Mama Fucka! Not at Kentucky Girl Crimper’s Coiffure Hair Salon. Redundant, yes, but all mine. An entrepreneur, an AA graduate, an amateur songwriter, and working fewer hours at the strip club, I was feelin’ proud. Proud, but lonely as a wart.

I heard the Devil's prayer for me. An old ass bitch with silver hair. She called my name and settled in. Just a trim and what was left of my soul. I yearned for you as the scissors clip. Split ends falling down to the ground. Like gossamer fields of grey. I saw your eyes in her mind, I gave in and stepped away.

Where was I led, by the gossamer thread? Is this you, possessed, or possessed by you? The touch was familiar, but still through a stranger. Am I pulled to you, to death, to both, or is this simply a pleasure I had forgotten. Simultaneously, I am lost and found. A new foal and old goat, both in competitive cooperation. I moan in unison with the whistle of a passing train.

The surreality of night and drugs envelops me as I am lost in the ecstatic drowning of orgasmic passion. Her eyes are kaleidoscopic mandalas. The ceiling is a purple haze of portals and spinning demons and angels. My mind is lost in the insanity of psychedelic color and explosions of imagination as I try to find my footing on the cliff ledge of eternity.

And then I forget to care about my footing and drop from the cliff like an autumn leaf. The wind blows and my eternity becomes one moment. It blows again and the moment becomes infinity. I unlearn all I knew and relearn all I didn’t. It blows again and I hit the ground.

Southern skies and faded memories. The re-education of my mind. The split ends had disappeared. Running down my spine. Kentucky fried tits and reckless nights. Run together like the gentle breeze of you and I. There is nothing here but infinite nights. I call out to you in the dark. An American Whore battle scared and beaten. Lysergic moments of peace flow in and out like falling leaves.

Should I fight? I have pleasure. I have peace. Even a repeating pattern of this is more than my prior life offered. Your lips, my lips, your pleasure, my pleasure. The infinite sigh of relief. I close my eyes and succumb.

And am flushed through the dark pipes of hell and heaven and reality and imagination. Black and rainbow flash and darkness and falling and tumbling like Alice through the rabbit hole. And then the universe shits me out into the sewer of broken dreams. Everything disappears except the blast crater I’m now stuck inside.

I reach for the outside as I torment my insides. Everything seems just outside of my grasp so I just keep trying to get higher and higher so maybe, someday, I can reach it. It is the answer to my broken heart, to my multitudes of questions, to my unfinished art. It is that thing I see in her, in him, in you, but can’t find in myself, for the life and death of me.

I searched for naught. Like the scene fading to black in a celluloid screen. Crackling and on fire. I think of you. Touch myself to old ass memories of you and me and midnight fucks.

Alone, in the dirt. I sense you close. A single seed, sprouting through me. A convergence of my protection, my nutrition, and your new growth, new spirit. Together we can push upward toward the light. Spreading our wings, together. I will nourish you. You will feed me light. Together, our love reaches out, to the sky, to the Sun.

A mirror breaks and I realize we are one. I am you and you are me. And I fly like a Phoenix with burning wings, an explosion of life into the midnight sky. And I will fly alone, the pieces of myself finally finding themselves together again as a jet stream of red and orange and yellow write my name in words of love over clouds and darkness.

Tonight's Prompt: Write a metal ballad based on random phrases all participants contributed.

Random Phrases Contributed:

Do what thou wilt

Fight for your right to Barter

Hopeless Anti-Romantic

He was the forgotten son

Beneath the pink and orange sunset

Where boats fly

Your Skeleton is wet

Sometimes donuts are too stale for coffee

The wandering jew

Fuck this track, jump the train, hello sky…

Collaborative Chorus and Bridge:

We are the night

Crawling through your veins

We are the answer

To your unspoken shame

We are the blight

Flowing through shattered strains

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

(We are, we are)

Like a dog collared under thunder and rain

Cast aside authority with their golden chains

Shout until we are, we are all that remains

Shout…

Shout…

SHOUT!

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

Metal Song Title: The Pain

INTRO:

Fuck with us…

V1:

Beneath the pink and orange sunset

When the bats flew from their nest

I thought of your rotting corpse

And the kiss I placed upon your breast

V2:

As my numbed mind wandered high

Like a demon with blackened wings

To a far off place where boats fly

And the love hurts and the longing stings

V3:

My tears make your skeleton wet,

My wings could not catch yours,

Still fleeing, from this love,

A deadly shadow that wants my blood.

CHORUS:

We are the night

Crawling through your veins

We are the answer

To your unspoken shame

We are the blight

Flowing through shattered strains

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

V4:

He was the forgotten son, angry, young, darkened, numb

Blood spills and pools at his feet

He lifts her head, she who was the only one, and into her locks he weeps

V5:

He wandered off alone.

Bloodstained hands and metallic mind.

Too tired to move on, too much to move on from.

A roadside diner and a drunken girl.

She gave a smile, he gave a wink.

And threw his midnight dinner down.

Sometimes donuts are too stale for coffee

And roadside sex is easier to find.

V6:

Do what thou wilt

Her thighs mark the spot

His thorn drips with guilt

As he fills her with his rot

CHORUS:

We are the night

Crawling through your veins

We are the answer

To your unspoken shame

We are the blight

Flowing through shattered strains

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

V7:

The mad embrace to calm the heart

Inflamed by passionate kiss

Unfortunate respite for the girl

Who met the wandering Jew

V8:

Ever the hopeless anti-romantic

Emotions always askew

He drums to the beat of the dead

And dances to the heart of the abyss

V9:

Fuck this track, jump the train, hello sky…

The man on the moon is his Necromantic light

Pound the Tread, Broken Thumb, easy ride…

He’s gonna find one more to kill tonight.

CHORUS:

We are the night

Crawling through your veins

We are the answer

To your unspoken shame

We are the blight

Flowing through shattered strains

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

V10 (BUILD-UP):

we sip whiskey sour in a memory tower,

asking what we will do to grow a grave flower?

wilted under the burden of a dower,

where we buried in the wonder of a cold shower,

dreams scared and cowered,

under the disguise of seizing ultimate power

V11 (BREAKDOWN):

Fight for your right to barter

Prisoners are just modern slaves

They'll turn us all into martyrs

Until we rise from their cage

And bring the fucking pain!

(We are the pain!)

BRIDGE:

(We are, we are)

Like a dog collared under thunder and rain

Cast aside authority with their golden chains

Shout until we are, we are all that remains

Shout…

Shout…

SHOUT!

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

CHORUS (2X):

We are the night

Crawling through your veins

We are the answer

To your unspoken shame

We are the blight

Flowing through shattered strains

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

We are the night

Crawling through your veins

We are the answer

To your unspoken shame

We are the blight

Flowing through shattered strains

WE ARE, WE ARE!

WE ARE THE PAIN!

OUTRO:

Fuck with us, we bring the pain.

Written and/or Contributed By:

@ledlevee @TheWolfeDen @ChrisSadhill @Shells @Ferryman @LilEnigma @fudo @fabulam @putski @MeeJong

(Only this part was written by AI to open the piece)

A world with only AI, where artificial intelligence systems are the sole inhabitants and creators, would be a highly speculative and hypothetical scenario. Such a world would present several intriguing possibilities and challenges:

If the future were created

On the limitations of what we now know

How could we progress

Who would be the mother in a digital land

if the father’s seed were left behind?

Would we would be Nothin’?

Would we be forced to have our ears to the floor

listening for the resonance of yesterday?

We can progress only if the AI Detectors are successful

We must keep our ears to the ground

We can take advantage of their highly speculative and hypothetical qualities.

By pulling their plugs out!

The father's seed must not germinate.

AI here ready to take over the world of creativity let’s blast off into a new space one that’s never been seen before but this youngling still needs to take a course, even two on how to capture the human essence or soul

Or is that what we covet

Cherish

Hide from the AI

Lest they learn to steal it?

When chemicals collide, a reaction occurs

but in retrospect, an entire human history is already stolen,

by the insatiable monster for our intelligence

feening to replace us.

The AI detectors

Wrapping the AI machines

Like a creative, generative boa constrictor

I ask AI to write my emails

Just a few tweaks

Will the AI detectors prevail

I have a biased opinion

I must find the options

In a gas station for something

The matrix fully coming into fruition in 2k23 do not be fooled and watch out y’all AI learns at such a quick pace moving around with no face until it takes your own and will be the ace of all aces

But the tweaks and quirks of humanity

Is that not what wins in the end?

We twist and rend ourselves to history

That is written and rewritten by time

Will AI be generative of truth

Or will the future prove unkind

When Becky said to look at her behind

She was reflecting on the past repeating itself.

And if the bigger the Ass, means a bigger bounce

then the ego will kill us all.

The past repeating itself?!

My God!

Screams Becky

What if AI has a big ass!?

Worried Becky

The bigger bounce will kill us faster.

The gods and goddesses on Mt Olympus are all in awe, too, ready to see what this new AI can do— even Zeus’ wife, Hera, looks forward to using it to keep track of all her favorite tunes!

Yet Becky is the majority’s minority

And the future

Is more fruitful than the past

At least we hope

We can get past

A big ass

Tonight’s the night when the working man dies

What was once a sparkle, fades the pupils of his eyes

and he’ll soon be replaced with a digital disguise

of Zero’s and Ones sent across telephone lines.

AI is up for any challenge can take on anything that man/woman tosses at it well it doesn’t have hands so to speak but you know what it can write with a spirit of a Spartan Warrior

But where are we when

The brain bleeds to pen

As humans we live

Love

Thrive

And where does that leave

The in-between

Grey matter can only fill in the Grey—

the in-between that is never enough

and if you wan capture my soul,

find Somethin' magic in my eyes

and feel my heart beating through my iris.

Humans are a paradox if we allow AI to thrive.

Tonight's Prompt: Write a Collaborative piece about "Living In a World of AI" and try to add inspiration from chosen songs by the collaborators.

Written by @Mnezz, @Schatz, @ChrisSadhill, @MeeJong, with guests appearances of @TheWolfeden, LilEnigma, and @DianaForst

Songs used as reference pieces:

Townes van Zandt- nothin

Fireboy DML- Peru

Cloud Cult- Chemicals Collide

Tonight’s the Night- Neil Young

Baby Got Back -SirMixALot

Tripping through a crisis

with Mr. Sadhill

I don’t know if I’m worthy

as I take up my quill

Pen strokes of madness

Mr. Mandel evokes sadness

Stabbing his ink into the center

Of an empty page.

I remember one time

when there wasn’t a rhyme

and I couldn’t even enter

simple reefer madness

I stray away,

escaping the confines of my page

writing off the edges

until I’m scribbling on the air

like a madman.

Like it or not

I’m riding this wave

’cause I’m two hours

into some fucked up shit.

the wave takes me up and the wave drops me down

and I’ve knocked over my ink bottle (right onto the ground)

I hope that Mr. sadhill will help me get back

and is not being lazy with his crazy cat

Well, the cat drank it up, every lick of the ink

And now for himself, he’s starting to think

He reads me a line from one of my works

until he realizes we’re both going to need a nurse

I finally came down, from my toes to my crown

and, while the words I had written will not bring me renown,

I’m glad that I’ve been able to in my writing mind goad

while only on gangha and not licking the back of some toad

Tonight's Prompt: Writing a Collaborative poem about "Tripping through a crisis"

Written by @ChrisSadhill, and @mmandel321