Blinking and shinny the clouds are calling, 

Night and noon debating,  the day grows longer. 

Love candle scenting, honey pot sweeter. 

Night flies whispering "the lovers are together".

Yielding to another made their story line a lyrics, 

The beauty of their love made unlike terms attractive, 

Their rythemic smile traps the eyes of all, 

Their love supersies the bite of a beast. 

Dressing in hatred to lift fallen crowns. 

The Creator of doom making love a tale. 

Crushing the bones, the feelings were pleading. 

Life Omits Vandals Eminent. 

The tales of Barbie's made love recanate. 

The lynching doom was now a victim of loneliness. 

Sweet scent of vanilla makes valentine lovely. 

The freezing fire will always burn forever. 

She was love overflowing. It dripped into a chalice, and it had never been emptied. It was too great a cup, occupied in the grandest halls of tribute. Everyone drank from the blood of her bleeding heart resided in that golden cup. And those who poised their lips to it received the Gods' offerings as the Gods received their adoration. She could not love just one singular person, for her love was the purest, most self-sacrificing, and that produced magic. It was from this that sprang forth Spring, flowers and water itself. Eros became instantly infatuated with her, and he wrongly wanted Agape all to himself. Erratic, lacking caution all his life, the Great Gods rightlh prohibited him seeking courtship with Agape. It came from fear. What if all of her love, the power and drive of their world, could be directed in an all consuming flame of combustion when met with Eros' desires? He was to remain on the plains of Earth, as always, spurring and flaming man's desires to produce more serving mortal servants, and that alone. But...He made many a plea and entreaty for her to run away with him and to forget what he considered to be her shallow admirers. She refused him, even though her love for him grew daily as did his attentions. His free spirit made her long for him, to be free with no bars. Agape worried. She had to love everyone equally. That was where her power came from, she did not know what was to become of her if she didn't obey it. Equitable love tempered the sheer strength of her love. Eros, brooking no refusal and becoming ravenously jealous by the day, entered the hall on a cool, starry evening, and convinced her to give him all the love she possessed; he drank all the contents of her cup of sustenance. She had died right then, as did Eros, and they created the first lovers' suicides and with it a curse; with their deaths, the bountiful spring valleys dried up and cracked like deserts. Her body turned to stone, and she was whisked away into a special part of the underworld. She herded the lost lovers of the world, harnessing their power to give to the Gods who restored the scarred Earth. She, a lost lover, and now the Queen of lost lovers.

........................................................................

Agape's tears ran black against her cheeks, underneath her black veil. She stirred an orange river with a large wooden ladle; what bobbed up from its rivets and currents were statues of lovers once possessing the warm skin that forever held a blush. Now, their skin was cold stone. She constantly wept for those the world treated so cruelly, a world that drove them to suicide. The River of Suicides, it was called, and her tears created it; indeed, she cried for all the lost lovers of the world over, and those tears made the river they drowned in within the Underworld.

When she falls apart,

he doesn't try

to put her back together

He patiently sits

and hands her the pieces

until she feels whole again

Good morning, Prosers,

We’d like to introduce you to a new weekly feature, Writer Wednesday.

This feature focuses on the wonderful words coming from our Letters from Prison contributors. Some of you may not be aware of this initiative yet, but by the end of this post you will be!

Each and every Wednesday, Sammie and Paul visit prison and teach creative writing to the residents there. We then bring their words to Prose and post them in the Letters from Prison Portal where members of the Prose community comment on them, providing much needed support and feedback which we then take back into prison and share with the residents.

This program has provided the inmates with a much needed release whilst improving their spelling, grammar, self-confidence, and has had a profound effect on their mental health, too.

This new weekly feature is to celebrate some of the cracking words that escape the bars and make their way onto Prose.

From the start I should have knew

That your comfort wasn’t true

I’d engaged in a war that I couldn’t win

And I carried your plague like a heartless sin

~@lowerWESTLEY

From: Alice In Wonderland

You have your own will, I will ruin it

I am not the needle, I am the poison inside

~@Carmen

From: Satan’s Twin

The fear of the abyss

Makes all of my bodily fluids

That’s rancid, run down my leg

~@Squeakypeewee01

From: The Abyss

If you like what you read here, we encourage you to check out the Portal, get commenting and supporting this amazing program.

Until next Wednesday, Prosers,

Prose.

"It is better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all", Neil said.

"FUCK THAT hopeless romantic bull shit!" Carl says before spitting and passing the blunt back to Neil.

Neil inhales the blunt twice while he holds the mind altering smoke in his lungs until he coughs roughly. Carl tries to pat Neil on his back while laughing but Neil shrugs away and goes to the corner of the building to lean over and regain some air. Once he is breathing normally again he asks, " Do you believe in love? Like do you think it's real?"

Carl busts into a clown like laugh. " Are you fucking serious bro?", he asks Neil.

Neil looks at the ground then into the sky. Carl studies the look on Neil's face then leans back against the wall and then puts the blunt to his mouth. He turns his focus to the redness of the blunt's end as he inhales and says, "No, I don't believe in love." He exhales the smoke and passes the blunt to Neil. " But I do believe in obsession and attachment. Those two things create the illusion of love. So yes I hate the hopeless romantic shit because it is better to not love at all. I don't see the point in losing an obsession that I've become so attached to." Carl said before taking the blunt in his hands again.

She sits atop her fence,

Dangling words in the breeze

While I wait across the street,

Hanging behind the tree.

Fingers can’t find their way over

Syllables

Just like her smile remains

A flash of sun

But never lightning striking earth.

Not this flesh

Not these bones,

Not the spinning dance

As she pirouettes between land and sky.

My only touch,

The closeness of a whisper

As she leans in to confide

I taste the fire in her lungs

Burning through my skin

An unsigned treaty

Between sovereign nations

Of who we are

And what I long to do.

     "Y'know, Neil." he dragged the cannabis smoke deep into his lungs. His friend's name came out suppressed, in a low frequency. He paused while holding his breath to fully infuse his bronchial capillaries with the full gamut of Mary Jane's combustion, none the least being, the elements of THC.

     Neil stared at the cranberry red ember perched near the tip of Carl's fingertip. The roach's abdominal end was nearly extinct. He wondered how his friend's index finger and thumb tolerated the heat. His mind went off on tangent from the subject of stars's phenomenon of innumeracy to the theoretical aspect of man's inventions involving the ubiquitous roach clip and related paraphernalia. "Carl could sure use such an instrument now," he thought.

     "Dude, y'know, Neil, . . . " He exhaled lengthily. Smoke followed his words. "It's not so much about numbers as much as it's about infinity. There's really no end number that's fully quantifiable. You and I both know we're fairly close to the actual number of stars within our own galaxy, but what about dark matter, string theory and alternate universes?How many stars there?"

     It wasn't a question begged of his fellow colleague, as much as a quantum physics exercise to play mental bridge.

     "Hey pass the joint, or what's left of it," Neil pleaded. "I get your point - but what's your point?" He pulled the bit of roach to his mouth holding it precariously between a pair of forceps and sucked ever so gently. His lips were puckered forward into thin mandible-like lines of dexterity.

     "My point is - cool forceps . You always carry those things? - Ooodles of stars! That's what our known universe contains, oooooodles of 'em."

      Hysterical laughter erupted from Neil. His characteristic broad grin matched the breadth of his forehead. Each time he attempted a rebuttal, his frame quaked. They'd been sitting on the concrete steps of Cornell's deep space telescope observatory when overcome with laughter. "Dude, my side hurts oooodles. The weed's inspired a numerical term of value. Ooodles huh?"

     "Oooodles on my noodle. Twinkle twinkle little oooodles, . . . Hey Neil check it out." Carl stood up abruptly and pointed skyward toward the Orion Constellation. "The hunter's armpit, the red giant, it makes me wanna light up another blunt."

     "Why's that, 'cause of the red tip on my roach?"

     "Yeah, that's ponderous thinking. Our own sun will become a red giant in 4.5 billion years. Then we're gonners." 

     Neil bit into his pizza. "Hey Carl, say Billions again!"

"Is it possible, Neil," I began, as I rolled

The weed in the browned paper sold

By the man at the nearby corner store

"That the religion is something we can't ignore?"

"Well, Carl, good question." Neil inhaled the essence

"Perhaps all can't be explained (away) by science."

"Yup," I took my hit. "Too much beauty to be

quantified by science." I nodded, happy to be free

from science's restrictions.  Neil's face broke to a grin.

We passed the blunt between us in silence then.

And, as he stifled the blunt's flame of clarity out,

Neil asked a single a question to the air, "what now?"

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan smoked their blunt

Ashes hit the floor and then their minds went on a hunt 

Cosmic cultured chaos and dimensions never seen 

Opened up before them, as a rift in time's routine 

Spilled sequential merit as the two discussed in tune 

Aliens and artichokes; a riddle and a rune

Neil gave his opinion of the theory of last breath 

Carl began to argue there was something after death

Suddenly another voice became the scholars' host

"Neil, you know he's right because dear Carl is now a ghost."

Blown away by what was said, Neil talked of his approach 

Carl agreed in fullness and their new friend hit the roach 

Laughter soon invaded as the scientists fell numb

Floating into nothing, they forgot where there were from

Conversation followed but the words were lost in space 

Smoking blunts will do that, as will food stuffed in the face ...

#scifi #poetry

On a snowy night in Ithaca, two coated figures stood on the platform watching the taillights of the next to last bus pull away. 

"You've got to listen to the voice inside you."  One pulled something out of his coat pocket as he turned to the other, a younger man, and continued. "If you think Cornell is it, we'd love to have you and we'd do a lot of good.  It's not an easy decision you have, but remember that some of the greatest things happen by accident."  He presented the object in his hand and looked at the sky as if to catch a glimpse of stars beyond the clouds.  "Got a light?" 

The young man looked at the object and back to his companion's face.  "Is this a test, sir?" 

"What? Oh, no.  Just a way to pass the time until your bus.  We grow it in the back garden."

The young man's expression changed quickly from surprise to amusement as he fished a matchbook from his back pocket.  "All right, well I just want you to know I would never do this in the lab or before class or anyth-"

"Neil, it's all right.  May I?"

He lit it, rolling the tip through the bright match flame before bringing it to his lips.  The ember glowed like the receding taillights as the men passed it wordlessly, watching snow flakes settle softly to the earth in long, straight paths.

"They kind of look like stars passing if you squint."  Neil made his eyes into slits as he drew in smoke.  He let out slow, misty breath.  "When I was a kid, on snowy days I would stand in the yard looking straight up, pretending I was flying through space. Wouldn't come in for hours, drove my mom crazy. 'Why don't you play?'  She'd say, 'build a snowman!'  But I was playing." 

Carl gave a soft laugh. "Playing at meeting your distant physical relatives, more distantly related than anything we can know here on earth.  Even most meteorites come from our own system." 

"That's right! People don't even realize their connection to animals, much less the sun or any other suns."  He felt suddenly embarrassed.  Who was he to affirm Sagan? 

"Similar ingredients, different pots."  Carl grinned, examining the blunt in his hand.  "We are the universe smoking itself."

Neil breathed a short laugh and Carl stepped off the platform towards his car, pausing to look up through snow. 

"Hey, you're right.  Call me if your bus doesn't come."