I Wonder.
True love, ineffable, eludes description,
Only within its embrace do its depths unfold.
In the park, a scene of ethereal enchantment,
Midst the brumal zephyrs of early spring,
You, shivering for dear warmth,
Narcolepsy casting you under its trance.
Do you remember?
Nodding in and out of the moment,
Until our eyes intertwined,
Igniting a flame latent, dormant, reassuring.
Do you remember?
Your gaze, a cascade of chocolate,
Glinting in the moon's tender light,
Rain pittering, a symphony above,
The prelude to our magnum opus.
Your smile, radiant, surreal.
It entrapped me in your world.
The scent of fresh lavender,
The saccharine of honey.
You, my life raft in turbulent waters,
The guide through life's labyrinthine trials.
We began as spectators,
Unaware our destinies would entwine,
Unaware our hearts would beat in unison.
And yet, in the end,
We cared not for the stains of infidelity
Upon our blossoming roses and violets.
Do you remember?
When I draped my jacket over your shoulders,
A coronation of our love.
The night, our playground,
Youthful and naïve,
Believing it would never end.
But mere months later,
Your petals scattered like doves,
Your stem withered into ash,
Leaving behind a specter of the girl I once knew.
May you remember me
As I remember you,
Your legacy etched in my soul.
The Tritone
Augmented
B5
Chords
Deny
Entities
From
Going
Heavenly
Into
Jehovah's
Keeping.
.
Languishing
Music,
Nuanced
Otherwordly,
Powerfully
Queer
Resonance,
Sounds
Tritonic
Under
Wiccan's
Xenial
Yearnings —
Zounds!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: B and F form a tritone in the key of C major, a triad from the root B, a major third (D#) and a perfect fifth (F#). It need not be from B, but can be constructed from several notes — for example, by widening a perfect fourth and narrowing a perfect fifth by one chromatic semitone.
I am not a musician, so some may want to weigh in on the above definition if I need correction. However, because of the tritone's natural discordant sound (as heard by the human ears), it is often used as a menacing warning in horror movies or a change to the ominous in music. It is called the "Devil's chord," or diabolus in musica, because of its dissonance. It is rumored that it may have even been banned by the Catholic Church in liturgical music in Medieval times, but this is apocryphal.
The word, "Zounds!" is a contraction of "God's Wounds" (the stigmata of Christ on the cross) and, as such, is used as a swear or oath of indignation or surprise.
Worlds Apart
Here’s why I believe reading fiction is the cure to social media.
When your on social media you’re consuming the world.
When you read a novel, you are creating a world.
Books contain vivid details you recreate in your mind.
Social media robs you of discernment and leaves you blind.
Books connects you to new worlds
Social media keeps you on an island
Dying of thirst while surrounded by water.
Surrounded by people but feeling no connection,
What you feel in a book is real,
Because it’s a true reflection.
Of who you are, what you think,
what you feel, what you see,
It’s all tinged through with the hue of
Me.
Reading is intimate, personal, interpretation.
Social media leaves you lost in desperation.
Henry Miller’s interest, one true north, and a leaf in autumn.
On the show today, Miller leads into a poem by Mariah, a short and heart-soaked piece to arrive on shore when it must, and then into a short story by a fellow named Frank Gainey, whose words flavored the coffee beneath the mic, and set Saturday for an open eye and a casual shot of bourbon.
Here's the link to the writers being narrated on Prose. Radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0S3Ct8RNbs
And we'll link the authors below, along with their pieces.
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
A splash of Shakespeare, extra dirty, and two winter chasers.
Winter's breath brings two beautiful pieces of writing to the show, to chase down a strong and shaken starter from the man himself, and his Sonnet 12.
Here's the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-wQgZPa94
And. As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
John Fante’s bright night flowers, regret, and the cessation of consciousness.
From the great city of Fante's Los Angeles at dark, enters two writers yet to be featured, and now their words have graced the show, and we're here to tell you, the words are beautiful.
Here's the link to Prose. Radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lOWnoK36fY
And here's the Challenge where the writers are featured, created by beatricegomes.
https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14419
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Nietzsche’s madness, Huck Finn jailed, chained expression.
Look how these two writers pair up to follow a German of genius in Episode 2 of Prose. Radio's Liquid Velvet Literature spotlight, featuring these long-standing columns on our own private Mount Olympus of rogue minds and loving hearts.
Frankie Valli was off by one beat:
Prose. is the word.
Here's the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZV4ZF8-neE
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Maiden voyage, Buk, and two off the top.
Hope your Tuesday is running along just fine. A few things here. One, we're getting a lot of new writers on the site, which is ruling. We want to let them know that our house, in the middle of our street, is still and likely always going to be going through improvements. Small crew keeping it weather-safe, and the wheel of progress can be slow, but it is sure.
Any and all questions are best sent to info@theprose.com where one of us will either answer or find an answer.
Two, our banned book Challenge is really getting us going. It was slow to burn, but now, when it sparks, it rages. Loving the pieces in that one.
Here's that link. https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14416
Three, we've undergone some changes with the YouTube channel, after a lengthy decision over the weekend, as we thought it best to make it more of a radio show, because how many thousands of YouTube channels are there with hosts and talking heads? Answer: So many we decided it kind of dimmed us to add another, especially with a year straight of a loner turned, "YouTube guy," who was actually awkward and uncomfortable being in frame, and came across almost opposite his personality, which was fun for some smirking team members, but pure Hell otherwise. Haha!
We hope you like the new format. We love it. And it opens a few doors: Listen while driving, cleaning your place, bathing your dog... And the show can be longer in an easier way. Or shorter in an easier way; easier being the visuals not distracting from or influencing the work being featured. We are, after all, writers and readers. And two of the writers in the video today, following a legend's poem, both bring their respective and distinctive beauty to you. Here's the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W2B6vkKIC0
And...
As always...
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
A Novel, New Method of Sensitivity Training
It is a small, one-room Louisiana jailhouse with iron bars and a searing tin roof in which the boy is imprisoned. Thirteen years old, the freedom loving child has committed the ultimate crime against humanity and has been caught red-handed, and so he must suffer its justice. The boy spends much of his time standing on his cot hoping to nab some fresh air, and to better see out the window, wincing painfully when one of the fingers clinging to the window’s sill accidentally brushes against the scorching bars.
In the corner of the window cowers a tiny black widow. The boy has named the pest Polly. He lets Polly be, mostly, unafraid of her nature to bite. More-so he pities her, she being stuck in her own prison, what with a blue lizard awaiting it on the inside wall and a tarantula on the outside and nary a breeze to parachute away upon. Yes, much like the boy, the spider finds herself too curing alone in this post-modern pickle jar.
Yet, it is not just these two with troubles. This infernal little environment is safe for none, as the blue lizard has his own worries, tasting like chicken and sharing a room with our starving boy. And outside a Piper has spotted the tarantula, and a moccasin has curled itself up in the shade of the jail’s wall, and a gator roars angrily from out the bayou, and all this while a dusty devil of buzzards circles ever higher up the blue-clear sky above.
It is a rough place for a boy out of tobacco, his every craving unsatisfied, a hellish though deserved place. But do not pity him. The boy has committed a crime… many crimes, in fact. He is a criminal, who first and mostly has forgone God. Besides that though, the boy has killed the father who resented him, and has escaped the widow who would gentrify him, festering him with sentimental, matriarchal rules. This boy has run, and rafted, and fished, and wished, and smoked, and joked, and done it all naked and shoeless and free of guilt or shame, til now.
So you see, he is the vilest sort, and is deserving of all that comes to him, the happy little shit.
But those are not his worse crimes, not by a long shot. The boy has also lied, and stolen.
He stole a man’s property and ran away with it! He pretended sickness and death to keep that property. He resorted to trickery to evade its re-capture. The boy had the fucking gaul to take another man’s man and give it hope, friendship, and freedom! Good God, you may ask! What in thunderous tarnation is wrong with the lad?
But, no worries. He is finally caught, called out by the righteous throngs.
Because incredibly, even these are not his worse crimes. He is much more nefarious than a liar, a thief, a murderer, or a happy child willing to risk his free way of living just to save another from bondage. This lad is so much worse. This boy has allowed a bad word into his 150 year old narrative… a hurtful word. And he has allowed it in on purpose, his intent to shock, and to disgust, and to apply a liberal coat of guilt across the wall of humanity he fully intended to tear down when he began narrating the story, and unveiling the fucking hypocrisy’s surrounding him.
But instead humanity has torn him down. Huckleberry indeed!
God have mercy on this poor boy’s soul, for we, with our outraged volumes full of feelings, shall have none.
Chapter II