I'm stealing some joy from the narrowing back of the river.

Take its ribcage deep into my eye,

sunken in sun...

Gifting me it's clumsy souvenir,

the ceaseless dance, an unrehearsed eternal choreography.

Around the muddy fingers of its bank,

despite the protests growing in its mouth from fallen trees.

I desire to describe the air between the captured images in words...its taste of me as it loses its name tangled in my tousled hair, its feel on me and its own feelings as it strikes and rushes past my cheek…

maneuvers around the corner of the groove above my lip- parted in syllables unborn and mysterious to me.

And I realize my flaws are perfectly refraining from a wish because they're flawless.

She says “just look at the butterflies”

I talk to dead friends through live friends

while I walk the dog

into morning dew dressed grasses, plants and flowers feeding on the sun.

My thin fingered lashes play catch with the rays grasping the light to keep it, to bring it...

it aims its arrows at my skull

I am the keeper

The wanter of want

The escaped

Returned to myself in one morning

I have ghosts standing over my shoulder and the death toll is staggering…

I evoke their names

sometimes while driving and catching a sight of birds flapping into existence

or a motorized hum in the distance

Susan…

The dead heroes lined up and coded by color alphabetically entombed on my shelf are a joke.

The true heroes are the ones who tried to hero themselves out from under the teeth of sharks and got caught up in electric wires left out by idiots to smoother some sense of a spark.

I am writing this stream of whatever as this noise of a washing machine rumbles and throws itself against the neighbors wall…

And its mechanism isn't any different than mine

These are my favorite things...

Plays and carries itself past the candle scented in rain past the ceiling fans dusty embrace past my lips parched in need of some passion or a little change

past and through the opened window to the tips of the tree…heavy branch’d and ghostly cloud shadowed.

I once wrote about an ocean

thats inside of me

Oscillating

Overflowing

And how hard it is to contain such a large body of water inside my small frame

and how I cry into the iris of the night to be released from being tethered only to get wrangled in again by my own chains.

All fingers extended at me with a smirking and knowing

And she says “just enjoy the butterflies” from her grave in ash forever sleeping in the wind of her laughter spread about the air - thinly- whispers in the ears ever so slightly - barely..

and I laugh with her- audibly

so that I may catch her wave

I never said goodbye because there was no need

because she knew all this

Eat your trashed goodbyes

I found that scream I screamed into

it was just my own history

good enough for concrete where history don't mean a thing

Listen to me for just a moment

I am somewhere tired in your stores

your shipyards

your shoes jumping into big business and politics

drunk in your pockets

Its becoming harder and harder for me to recall the wallpaper

my memories are a million lost corners

so go

go somewhere

Climb a fence…

Get caught

trespass and get lost

because I could get thirsty or hurt in your industrial trap

The reader stops believing

all rendered by the same hand that devastates and subdues.

Triumphant and trivial

bent to the keys all hell in her eye she write this:

Just give me ONE good window

Bare bulb

No blind or shade

Just a starved little kid burning out the old roaches stuffing their guts with history

To the streets men

On the blocks boys to the gutter…

I stand reflected in mirrored sheets of rain

My art falls onto paper

red like the devil and his skin

Lines people spoke but never heard of…

I am an everyday word in an everyday world mistaking magic caught in the jaws of light on stage behind bar stools and secret destroyers.

Set to confuse the dreamless sleep pregnant with headlights in only a sweater flirting with rivers I run with a saint yes- tired- along the banks, roofs - music note wires-

The opposite of enlightenment is an envied edge and weightless drop into the emergency of brilliance…

The truth the memory the indecisions

snap my fingers sharp and starve an echo.

Vanished in the ecstasy bouquets of faceless hopes stuffed inside pockets

I spy the world in tongues found dismembered at the base of Babels tower

Unshaved

Uncooked

Placed in a pot

Terrified

I’m just an empty ghost convincing you how time does not exist

As you read this in my future, your present is written in my past.

In number 23, on Prose. Radio, Pablo Neruda sets the tone, and a wave of talent numbering 8 takes the wheel and drives us through some dark alleys, and some sun beaming through the window. RustyJames blends into the six to appear, each shining down in their own untouchable light, with Huckleberry_Hoo taking us into the firescape with something beautiful.

Here's the link to the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LxQOO-4ROs

And here are the featured pieces.

https://www.theprose.com/post/811409/i-am-alone-there-is-no-god-where-i-am https://www.theprose.com/post/811326/simone

https://www.theprose.com/post/811410/sharing-history-soup-with-a-friend https://www.theprose.com/post/810851/bob-ross-paints-his-eden

https://www.theprose.com/post/811211 https://www.theprose.com/post/811248/on-the-road-by-myself

https://www.theprose.com/post/811317/the-24-spinz https://www.theprose.com/post/811208/two-stiffs-and-a-weirdo

https://www.theprose.com/post/811397/the-pooh-tutorials

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

On the 49th day of my bardo I'll climb into an ugly womb to be expelled with all the sticky things, my histories flushed down the drain. And I'll enter this world again just as I have at least 913 times before dressed in waxy skin belonging to the wind.

This is the door I'll choose: orange like the angry sunset protests over times neglectful motions- chased behind tall buildings of a city gone betray me.

I'm painfully enlightened by its cracks, my fingers trace in spiraled patterns spelling out my old discarded names.

I'll enter the doorway knowing to forget the sea and leave its mystery for someone else to worship.

a candle used to be light

it used to be my utility

heat and safety pack

a must for weathering

the storms of every day

imagination

it used to be

the illusion

on the kitchen table

of getting more, for less

it set the atmosphere

like steaming tea

now it's truly luxury

I hold the glow in my heart

a reminiscent blade

and haven't seen one

in years, close up.

not safe! I tell myself

battery operated...

it's like I've grown clumsy

among infants in old age

04.10.2024

A lit candle challenge @KarenKitchel

In our lunchroom noon whisperings

we found the why

to the question of when

exactly the seeking out of our pieces took form.

From the shadow versions of us delicate and branched into splinters.

And how the day gave up hope leaving us to our own incarnations.

Because you couldn't escape yours

And I was ripped from mine.

And this is the slow and orbital way we attach and detach…

With our halos on our feet, aimed to inspire.

On the show today, Mazzy Star lights the way into a dark and light wave of five unyielding talents from Prose. Mariah leads the rest of the requests, down or up through the beauty of these brains, all wrapped in a bow from Russia with love.

Here's the link, you magnificent mofos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TII4uFRDm8

And here are the pieces featured.

https://www.theprose.com/post/804782/dusk https://www.theprose.com/post/811051/converted-brahmanist-2024-spinoza

https://www.theprose.com/post/808088/you-took https://www.theprose.com/post/810984

https://www.theprose.com/post/810980/leftovers https://www.theprose.com/post/811048/-

The Last Time

The last time I heard her speak

She was sure of her words

"Tell my children I love them

You, my husband, already know"

The last time I saw her walk

She spun on her heel

Giving me a glimpse of what first attracted me

And what kept me under her spell

The last time we ate dinner

I gave her the night off

Her favorite was eggplant parmigiana

The fine wine, I chose, covered for my cooking errors

The last time we said good night

I dreamt of our future together

Awashed in laughter and love

Void of pain and sorrow

The last time I saw you

Before they closed the coffin

I recited our wedding vows

Knowing we would (someday) meet again