Mayday
This life
My thoughts
Are destroying me
Heartbroken
And gouged
While I gauge
Everything
Stumbling through
Mounting liabilities
Spinning
Toward the back
For what it's worth
As Pollyanna shouts,
"Carpe Diem!"
I wheel around
Take her fuckin' head off
Light another cigarette
And write another poem
David Burdett
7/6/2023
Coffee, Dog Hair, and an Engine of Didactic Beauty.
Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.
Just a quick video on our channel to introduce a writer new to us, and a mind we
really shouldn't do without. Link is just south and left of this sentence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEh_rcSbed4
And.
As Always...
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Einstein Rolls the Dice
the paparazzi swarmed all over Einstein
after he said make sure where the rope is tied
before you kick over the chair
he wrote his own scripts now
Further Adventures in Archaeo-Astronomy
tonight the constellation Vertigo
a place of no equilibrium
a hell of uterine contractions
even though his head was elfin
a little bone crushing ceremony
and bingo you are out on bail
I didn't mean to hurt anyone went the 911 call
they finally brought him down with magnets
the dilemma meters were going purple
only minutes away from a fatal lap dance
that could blacken the portals of infinity
hauled before the cosmic court of opinion
sentenced to prompt and urgent expungement
they failed to contend with the absurdity
of Al's relativistic social barometer
smuggled in by a derelict ex-stockbroker
his obsidian blade plunged like a fang
into the bailiff's waiting eyes
and the jury of inflatable sex dolls
made obnoxious leaking air sounds
until all that was left was a talking skull
divulging Al's General Theory of Anathema
flip the law of averages on its back
and your troops are in the citadel
paradise being a system of payoffs
on the origin side of the lens
yes the light is tricky in there
images fall feebly on the big screen
Al's life was now a gravitational anomaly
no plot no narrative no story
he was ready to sack a city
his Igor hissed let's asteroid the planet
but the mouse pad Ouija opened a channel
to the vortex of utter charm
and he stamped and splashed singing
through the seven sewers of humiliation
wearing his we're going to hell pants
with only a mother's love for protection
and managed to lose all his pencils
somewhere between hand and ledger
being that his hands were missing fingers
almost all of them actually
lost in a departmental budget cut
allegorically left him all thumbs
unleashing a pandemonium of vague redemption
it was a close shave but Earth was saved
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
The Perfectionist is Listening
The rich are committing suicide
and taking us along with them
the prosthetic limbed bastards
Fort Darwin tottering on fewer stilts
once the Masters of the Universe
presently picking through garbage
looking for an Icarus to pilot
some way back among the clouds
their telepathic goon squads
armed with the hard on of God
squat in the darkness of doorways
lightning strikes all around them
even their telephone poles were clairvoyant
several thousand watts went up my leg
shorting out the only attention span I own
left me perforated but far from lacy
wearing all my masks all the time
fragments of self are selves
in a bulemic deconstruction
where form and content
mud wrestle incessantly for attention
on the crazy train to 3 color 3 finger hell
apparently the ancient gods still rule
in their madhouse heaven
ambivalent petulant flatulent gods
brandishing sword point conversions
wielding gun point perversions
the protagonists the antagonists
fornicators masturbators liquidators
pariahs and unlicensed poets
preaching hellstone and brimfire
now their carcasses are steppingstones
it's psywar out there kids
better find where they hid your dossier
mesmerized of the world unite
you have nothing to lose
but your failed methods of addressing reality
said his slowly twisting tongue
struggling for ratings like any media
the soul cannot erase it can only go sightless
a phantom trapped in melancholy
when we were built to dance
with the twinkling summer stars
he finally learned to undestroy memory
being an ascended master of non sequitur
carried aloft by the wings of Mother Goose
his metabolic hurricane of why
an inferno of intrigue and superstition
our embryo-headed UFO ruling class
have me inside their fence of skulls
an investment in diagram futures
the idiots
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
No Edge
one day there won't be an edge kids
just a hole in the ground for the suicidal
do a bacteria count of your spring water
while tossing down a few useless conventions
why do anachronisms live so long die so hard
and cause no embarrassment he mused
musing had become his compulsion since
the holy ghost serpent handling incident
their medicine man pronounced him dead 7 times
his own ancestors sent crows to peck out his eyes
the fortune cookie antidote worked off and on
then hell ascended under his smoking feet
their vanguard toes now on fire
one thing is bog certain in the lust for truth
contemplation will not buy you serenity
but yes your unbriefed life can be lived
without a prison cell oath of allegiance
if the universe demonstrates intention we’re it
the battle between sequence and simultaneity
may be good for another 10 cubed generations
in this hypnotist hunch monger demolition derby
where a legendary and enormous ignorance
complicates matters for no apparent reason
well maybe for the following reason
all explanations have been oversimplified
in a panorama of benign efficiency
arise you yuppies and management level trainees
you have all the tools of cognition
you will ever need right in your head
every act begins with an estimate
let's put Humpty back together again
feel relevant that's all there is to it
since a monopoly on endless pleasure
is yet to be fully achieved and moreover
the Great War in Heaven is officially boring
and furthermore the iris is a sphincter
just thought you'd like to know
sorry a lung obstruction makes my voice whistle
one fucking homophone after another
making the undead radar in on me
my wings have been clipped so many times
they fall off at the sound of grinding teeth
thanks to the dogs of innuendo and pantomime
we anthropomorphize absolutely everything
no beanstalks on the horizon he noted
just a marsupial orphan with an Aladdin's lamp
charmed into the gesticulating arms of Venus
by the secret patty cake handshake
then a magic thing happened
there is no magic
only unknowing
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
Whac-A-Soul
I've watched it
Zoom around like a pinball
With demon consciousness
Between you and I
We've watched it
Like some game
Of Satanic Whac-A-Mole
That we cannot win
Because we can't figure out
Who's swinging the hammer
And the only reason
I say pinball
Instead of bullet
Is because the last bullet
I saw
Blew out the back of my head
And did some serious damage
To the drywall
There are some messes
You can't clean up
David Burdett
7/3/2023
Beauty in death, and the new CotM!!
Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.
One day until the fireworks, unless you're in my neighborhood, where they've been constant for the last three nights... Speaking of beautiful things ascending, check out the winner of last month's CotM, whose story is featured in the new video on the channel, published just now, and linked below the new Challenge of the Month, number 41, or XLI, in numerals of Romans. Look just below the sentence that completes this paragraph to you.
https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14122
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuzwS08NIU0&t=10s
And.
As always.
-Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team