your touch comes

and goes

in seconds

always leaving me

cold and wanting

more.

Oh, dove of peace, amidst the chaos, a silent plea,

In your beak, an olive branch held tight,

a symbol of unity, in the world's plight,

soar above, oh bird of serene grace,

spread your message to every space,

with each feather's stroke, erase the hate

and sing the anthem of unity

For peace on Earth, as vast as the sky.

Where whispers of war are lost in the wind,

And the symphony of harmony is unpinned.

As nations embrace in a tranquil trance.

So let us join hands, hearts entwined,

In pursuit of the peace we seek to find.

For Earth is our haven, our home so dear,

May peace be our anthem,

Is the birdcage a curse? Or is it fate that the cage seller found it? Did it give it’s right to the other birds to fly in the sky? Does the bird rebel against the bars of its cage or against the life that created the cage? Does it spend its days imprisoned, humiliated, while other birds enjoy their freedom in the sky? Doesn't it have the right to that sky? Were wings not given to it to soar outside the cage? By God, then what does that bird do between the bars of the cage? It sits all day, all night, in front of those iron bars, pondering its fate. Is it a curse, fate, or an involuntary sacrifice? It finds no answer, and how can it find the answer when it’s nothing but the bearer of the question? And here we are, in a cage like a bird behind its bars…

Episode sweet sixteen rings in with a beat of Billy Idol, into a stream of consciousness wake, led by a man of duality, and topped off with a poem by one of the ever-shining stars in our night sky...

Beccawaits and BIGT round off the video with style and loving grace.

Here's the lnk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aadNTBBb54M&t=84s

And here are the pieces.

https://www.theprose.com/post/807496/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/805779/...

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

What do Walt Whitman, Danzig, Jim Morrison, Elvis, a shit job, and existentialism have in common? Episode 15 of Liquid Velvet Literature on Prose. Radio, that's what. Two writers follow W.W. to bring it home with words jumping alive with fire and life, and a touch of death.

Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ZY-9k0ZKg&t=121s

And here are the pieces featured.

https://www.theprose.com/post/807692/at-the-end-of-time-alexis-karpouzos https://www.theprose.com/post/807771/a-caged-bird

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

I know that our efforts all come to nothing. Analyze life, tear its trappings off, lay it bare with thought, with logic, with philosophy, and its emptiness is revealed as a bottomless pit; its nothingness frankly confesses to nothingness, and Despair comes to perch in the soulI know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing — and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork and all our ideas will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. I know, No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. I know the time — eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects — offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation. So, my dignity is broken and weak, in recognition of my impending defeat.

The man who is alone, who stands on his own feet, who is stripped bare, who asks for nothing and wants nothing, who has reached the apex of disinterested­ness not through blind renunciation but through ex­cess of clear vision, turns to the world which stretches out before him as a burned prairie, as a devastated city — a world in which no churches, asylums, refuges, ideals, are left — and says: «Though you promise me nothing I am still with you, I am still an atom of your energies, my work is part of your work; I am your companion and your mirror as you march on your merciless way. But I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to freedom alone.

...

It’s funny, really.

How we stare from our balconies at the ants scurrying below. How we pass them on the streets—the wanting eyes, the starving mouths, the empty hands. Hair stiff as wire, clothing an amalgam of layered coats and scarves, mismatched socks, worn-out sandals.

We pass them, and we think.

That could never be me.

Look at here. Look at now. In this moment, I’m all set. We get so acclimated to small comforts that our minds can’t even meet them halfway down. We can’t see ourselves in their shoes. Our imaginations just aren’t that big.

I used to think like that. Before the divorce and the alimony, before the recession, before the unemployment and fire and the insurance company refusing to compensate because I didn’t insure every blade of grass in my yard or knick-knack in my study.

I downsized to a trailer. But welfare cut my benefits again five months ago, and just like that I was another ghost at the panhandle. It all happened so slow. It all happened so fast.

And time don’t wait. They say it moves quicker as you get older. All I know is, as a starry-eyed grad student, I never pictured it would end up like this. I never pictured myself as a middle-aged loner sleeping with the rats under blankets of corrugated tin. This isn’t the life I went three-hundred-grand in the hole to build.

But where did I go wrong?

One minute, everything was falling into place. The next it was falling to pieces, and as hard as I tried to preserve it, the decay was just too persistent. It spread too fast, and overtook my future.

Everything’s decayed now.

Even my memories are starting to rust.

There’s a lady out here I used to pass by on my way to work, every day. I used to avert my gaze, never locking with her hungry, pothole eyes. Her chessboard teeth. Her gnarled, swollen hands and yellowed, untrimmed nails. They would reach. And I would walk. And she would call. And I would walk. And she would say “God bless you” anyway. And smile.

And I would walk.

Silent. Distracted. Too consumed by dizzying fantasies of the trophy wife who left me. Our future children that we never had. A bigger house, twice the size of the meager three-bedroom apartment we shared. I always wanted bigger, I guess. Now I have nothing. Now I’d settle for what we wanted to leave behind in a heartbeat.

I met that lady again just the other day. Apparently she’d found a shelter uptown a few months back and they’d helped her get her life in order. She got on as a dishwasher at this little diner. She looked a lot cleaner. Not fancy, by far. But she looked...ever-so-slightly like I used to. It was a sobering reversal, watching her hands.

They reached. And I couldn’t walk anymore. And she called, and from my teary eyes I could make out that her hands were no longer empty. They didn’t ask; they offered.

At the end of the day, I never had the heart to take her money.

But I learned her name.

It was Lila. Lila McPherson.

She had a name.

They all did.

Oh, and one more little bit of information I left out. The last doctor visit I could afford didn’t go so good. Not that it mattered. At this point I’d give anything just to get out.

Another year at most I’ve got to rot in this place.

I could look for the shelter that rehabilitated Lila. But why? I’d be getting polished up just to die. Anything from hereon out is an exercise in futility.

So now all I can do is find my reflection in passing. Wait for a bus window or puddle or mirror. Find myself, and try to recognize. Find myself, and try to remember. Still, it seems every newest version of myself I find, he’s so far removed from the man I knew. And there’s no strength left to change him.

All I can do is remind him, reassure him.

He has a name too.

#fiction, #prose, #challenge, #homeless, #depression