Overcast
“There’s a black cloud hovering over us kid, and like me,
it’ll follow you wherever you go. So, get used to it…”
An archfiend smog
is preying upon my soul,
and like Mother warned
my days will be plagued
by a curse, she burdened onto me
without consent.
I tried severing it,
but the more I rip and pull,
the deeper it burrows
like a desperate tick.
I’m a zombie vagabond
waking only to my requiem nightmare,
and I’m fucking sick of
the maggots clawing at my face
while buried neck-deep in shit
just waiting around to die.
Scarred
well before I abandoned the womb;
Born from a castaway,
hardly sixteen.
A child cradling a child
who wasn’t a miss-carriage
this time around.
I carried the bitterness of a mother,
once a twice-raped girl,
and wore her burdens just above my sleeve.
I earned that scout badge in a hospital bed
on a forgettable November morning.
A Scorpio with a stinger who has an affinity for being a prick,
and pre-loaded with a poison-coated tip for good measure.
I was born to fight or die trying
before I ever lived to see my first day.
I too felt raped.
My cards were dealt
upon the tables of inmates,
and I was taught how to play the game
before I knew how to hold‘em.
Forced to visit a prisoned father,
a narcissistic-arsonist;
A robber with a gun.
I was behind bars before I was behind bars—
A court-ordered indoctrination
became my baptism by fire.
TV screens and basketball games,
reclining chairs, and free food
didn’t look all that bad at 38 inches.
I was shown where men go to die,
and it looked a hell of a lot nicer than where I was living.
The world owed me everything
yet, its dues remained unpaid.
I binged cabinet doors and refrigerator drawers on the government’s dime
and drank my mother’s milk
she’d laced with Southern Comfort and cigarettes
to save money.
Many nights, she avoided a bathroom grave,
while I held her head above the drowning line.
I flushed that disgrace and wiped chunks from her face
while she slept on a linoleum bed,
then I scarfed down mental health issues for supper—
Never wasting those generous leftovers for breakfast.
Was this nature, or nurture,
or is this fucking “black cloud” actually real?
I was taught the comforts of living near death
so, I never needed to get a life.
I knelt before the gateway,
but it was vaster than curiosity itself
and I hadn’t a grip, so it sucked me in.
No sky to part, no lucid light—only a jade Cumulonimbus.
Sunny days became head-rolls on moonlit sidewalks.
Cocktails of uppers and downers, chasers and shooters, X and sex—
I was a night jackal, inviting a sunrise I never longed to see
because chasing dealers with baseball bats
and paying whores with fake hash seemed more exciting
then a god-damned repeating dot on the horizon—
until all I saw were dots on the horizon.
Darkness envelops those who invite it to dinner, and it’s hungry—
A jackal only bites a turned back, sometimes just for the taste,
until one day you’re startled back to life choking on vomit,
while someone else holds your head above that toilet swirl,
and only then do you rub elbows with your mother.
Sometimes it takes having to tango with death,
to appreciate the waltz of life.
For years I was just waiting around to die
and I suppose I did…
…but even death didn’t want me.
So here I am.
It’s just me and this Jade cloud suspended above.
and it’s my only certainty.
© 2023 Chris Sadhill
Memorialize
Would that we
would
memorialize
what we
would like
more of...
cause it's
thought that what
Thought
we emphasize
multiplies
thought
similar in kind
and aftershock
Then why
then
do we
not now
then
focus on
civil progress 'n
remember to
remember
the living
rights attained
Remember...
the future is still
unmemorialized.
2023 MAY 29
Sore and Confused in a Barn, a Compact Enigma, and our Apples of Discord.
Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.
We are proud to announce our new method for picking our poison, so check the YouTube video beneath the link for our Challenge of the Week CCXXVI right after this message. In today's video, we congratulate last week's winner, who wrote a hell of a piece to take her fella out to lunch, should she decide to do so.
-Hope your long weekend means a short hangover.
https://theprose.com/challenge/14041
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQggQwrIsPQ
And.
As Always...
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
vandals
i miss the certainty of us.
the way that we carved our names in picnic tables,
mementos of the defiant proclamations
that we were there, we existed,
we lived loud enough to leave
parts of ourselves behind.
i still marvel at every line etched
somewhere that it shouldn't be.
in the bathroom stalls,
the worn park benches,
the railing of a bridge
overlooking a bustling freeway.
every one of them a piece
of the person who marked it.
the optimistic permanence
of the letters we leave behind.
Algebra
In simple stop watch
calculation,
One hour is 60 minutes
. . . .is 3600 seconds. . . .
3600000 milliseconds.
But 5 minutes added,
here and there
throughout the 24
in a day,
is Twice that.
I'll ponder That.
Next time,
I'm thinking
of melted snow
in July. . . .
on a sailboat
out the window
in Greenland harbor.
05.28.2023
An hour challenge @JohnAulus
Conflicted
You are so horrible
I can’t stop thinking about you
The irritating way you speak my name
Captures my full attention
The weird way you view the world
Makes me laugh with abandon
And your regrettably stupid face…
Too handsome to bear
I really can’t stand you
I just thought you should know
You suck
You suck
Men
I don't like dogs with two legs and two hands.
They are the real burden on Earth.
They harm those close to them.
Bite the hands that loved them.
Men-dogs say they don't like four-legged dogs because they bite; well, I don't like two-legged dogs backstabbing sites.
They cheat and commit fraud without guilt or remorse.
Four-legged creatures are at least loyal and smart to some extent.