Friends weren't something 

That I ever came easily by, and so

I spent my summer days alone,

Climbing trees and walking our dog

And playing in sprinklers,

Each summer getting lonelier and lonelier.

There were friends, sure, that I met 

Once a year at camp and that was it,

And I had my siblings, but they got

Jobs and once again I was climbing trees

And playing in sprinklers, and walking our dog,

Alone and by myself, wishing that,

Even though I was too old for it,

That there was someone to draw with

Sidewalk chalk, and jump in puddles with,

And ride bikes, and giggle over cute guys

And make music with, or to hike in the woods

And get lost. But no one ever came to me,

And even today, I find that though there are

Those that I call occasionally and talk to, but

They are much older than me and live

Many miles away, so I sit and watch ripples

On the water, the waves in the grass, and

The sun set

Alone.

Most beautiful of things I leave—

flowers fall to whispered husks

in barren fields, cold, gray,

the spiral of dead leaves

as smoke rises

from dirt mounds. 

The bones

of an empty playground

groaning in the wind. 

The echo of the last cry,

swallowed in the earth.

It was Friday night and I had turned way too much water into wine. Inebriated and bored out of my mind, I had decided it was time for me to pick up a new hobby. My current hobby was becoming too redundant and mundane –walking on water lost its excitement with no one there to witness it.

That's it! I knew right then what my new hobby would be. I could create a group of followers to astonish with my water-walking skills!

Walking to the nearest moistened soil, I was giddy. I couldn't wait to create the first people to become my followers. Scooping up the soil, damp from stagnant water leaching from the nearby cesspool (don't ask, I was high when I created dry land and water, and I hadn't gotten around to fixing that little error yet) I began to mold the foul-smelling muck into a man-shaped form. I'll admit it was a sloppy job, but considering my wine-induced double vision is the reason Adam had two feet to stand on, I think we can look past the sloppiness.

I decided on the name Adam, which most of you already know, but what most don't know is, his last name is Miracle. A-Dam-Miracle. Haha!

Man I was drunk.

Anyways, I realized if I made a woman to pair with Adam, they could procreate my followers for me, and I could begin a new hobby –sword swallowing always intrigued me.

Ripping out a rib from Adam seemed an appropriate way to create his counterpart. I’m not sure why, but I'm pretty sure I was thinking about the barbecue ribs I had for supper the night before.

Eh, either way, Eve never asked me why I chose his rib, so thank fuck for that!

Eve is actually just a nickname I gave her. Her real names Even. Even Steven. Wine brings out a sick sense of humor –don’t judge me.

When I had realized that Adam and Eve were not procreating my followers for me, I attempted to “set the mood” by creating the moon and the stars to pepper the heavens in romantic lighting. But to accomplish this, I had to make the sun go away for part of the day, so the moon and stars could shine brighter. Aha! Dark and light!

The first night that the moon and stars came out, procreation began and it wasn't long before I had myself quite the audience. Everyone bowed to my water-walking skills, and I couldn't be happier than when I'd hear the “oohs” and “ahhs” of the crowd.

Before long, I became bored again, and quite frankly, Adam was getting on my nerves. Eve too. Adam couldn't stop begging to eat the stupid fruit I marked as inedible (Should've stuck to wine that night, whiskey makes me a bit of a control freak) and Eve apparently wanted to procreate with me, which I wanted no part of. I mean, wasn't that the purpose of creating them both? So I wouldn't have to put in the work?

Fretting over the current frustrations of my creations, I decided I would create something to eliminate them from the beautiful Earth I had made.

I'd need to lubricate my thinking wheels with some rum and Coke before stumbling upon a solution.

Yes! That's it! Flying animals to swoop down and carry these ignorant assholes away! So I took a long, hard swig of rum, straight from the bottle, and spat it into the air. Before my very eyes, an eagle had formed; such a big, strong looking creature. I instructed it to find the people, grip them with its talons, and carry them off as far away from me as possible.

The eagle flew the opposite direction, so I continued spitting rum in the air, making an entire fleet of all different species of winged animals. None of them heeded my instructions.

Pissed off and hungover the following morning, I was burning with the need for revenge. The winged creatures failed me terribly. I had to eradicate them, too.

I know! I'll make land animals, big ass wild cats, alligators, grizzly bears; oh the plethora of predators I had planned!

I had made two of everything and just finished the last pair of elephants, when one of the grizzly bears released a ferocious attack on me, nearly mauling me to death. Frankly, I'll admit it ok, that bear kicked my ass! I needed a vacation, but what I ended up with was one day of rest.

One. Fucking. Day?

Eh, it's all good I suppose. I created the food chain to get even with every species of the animal kingdom; my Friday night hobby is tuning into shows like “When Nature Attacks” and “Predators of the Wild” –unless it involves bears.

I don't need to get even with the people, they do enough damage to each other without me lifting a finger.

Hahaha! Ignorant shitheads.

act i

i will re-write the configuration of the stars, 

create lighthouses out of each, make them of sugar and not gas

let them sustain life among light 

i will create moons like emolients on harshness to the sky 

may i bless you with galaxies reachable in the mind and eye 

act ii

mother earth, i will recreate your beautiful figure once more 

return of the demure oceans, 

the vivacious waves and there crashing among the dulcet sand 

i shall call the angels to carve you like chatoyant

conflate the colors of the sunset once more, and plant roots in the curves of your earth 

i will recreate heat of your center, and women will be named after you because of it 

i will allow you the most blooming flowers, made of gossamer thread and sunlight 

may i bless you with creatures to take care of you 

act iii 

creation, 

i will mold you out of clay and stardust 

infuse your colors with the pigments like paints

all eyes and all color 

i will create your hair out of gossamer like flowers 

allow roots to grow from your insides, and create your body garden 

your mind will be as brilliant, but far more 

as you can form creation from thoughts 

and the universe will be recreated once more

i know one day i'll look back on this

waypoint

when i'm thousands of miles away

and smile

shake my head

and think,

damn, remember that?

and i'll remember--

lonely nights,

runway lights gleaming against a pitch black canvas,

the sound of a breeze through stationary turbines,

radio chatter,

sleeping on airport couches

waiting for another dispatch

i'll remember that waypoint--

the smell of jet fuel on hot days,

the feel of prop wash against sweaty skin,

twenty dollar handshakes,

prayers for tailwinds,

altimeter readings and IFRs,

tail numbers for Cessnas, Socatas, and Saratogas

i'll remember,

smile, 

and shoot the next RNAV approach.

As it rains outside,

she goes hot and cold again,

like she did last spring.

Good day, Prosers.

In this week’s Throwback Thursday, we look at the origins of swearing. The full version with beautiful imagery can be found later on the blog site. 

Let’s face it, most of us turn the air blue at some time or another. We often bleed blue ink when writing, too. Those that are offended by swearing, please look away.

Swearing, cursing, profanity and expletives all perform certain psychological functions, and use particular linguistic and neurological mechanisms; similar in behavior to chimpanzees when angry. Yes, it’s actually a form of anger management! But where did the use of expletives originate?

Unsurprisingly, many swear words have been around for thousands of years, and, of course, we have a lot to thank the ancient Romans for when it comes to swearing as a form of naughty language.

Swear words tend to fall into two categories, oaths and profanities—like taking the Lord’s name in vain—and then there's obscene words, including biological terms as well as sexual and racial slurs.

The Romans gave us a model for the obscene words type of swearing, Melissa Mohr explains in her book ‘Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing’. Like us, their swearing was similarly based on sexual taboos, but with a different spin. “The Romans didn’t divide people up [by being heterosexual and homosexual],” she says. “They divided people into active and passive. So what was important was to be the active partner.”

Hence, the sexual slurs used were more along the lines of words the likes of pathicus, a rather graphic term which basically means receiver. Ooer!

Swearing and cussing as we know it evolved much later on, with certain theories of their origins being acronyms savagely disregarded due to how late their examples as acronyms appeared.

"For unlawful carnal knowledge" or "fornication under consent of the king" are both false explanations for the word fuck and have a catalogued etymology. As for placing the letters S.H.I.T. as a precaution against potential explosions on containers at sea, apparently standing for "ship high in transit" — well, just no. The word shit has a much older and documented history.

Fuck can be traced back over 500 years to Norwegian fukka and Swedish focka, both meaning "to copulate." The OED's second edition, cites its use in English as fukkit in 1503, but the earliest current spelling appears as "Bischops ... may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit" from poet Sir David Lyndesay in 1535.

“Shit is an extremely old word that’s found in Anglo-Saxon texts,” Mohr says in her book. What English-speakers now call arses and farts can also be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons, she adds, though in those times the terms wouldn’t have been considered as impolite as they are today, simply biological.

Shit as a noun nods to Old English scitte, meaning "purging, diarrhea." And just the basic form of excrement stems from Old English scytel. The action, however, has a much more widespread history — Dutch schijten and German scheissen. The Proto-Indo-European base skie conveys the idea of separation, in this case, from the body.

As for Piss, English includes this as both a noun and verb. The verb appeared in the 1300s from French pissier, "to urinate," and vulgar Latin, pissiare. The noun came later, in the 1400s, and eventually morphed into an intensifying adjective — piss-poor, piss-ugly, etc. — around World War II

Still cussing, yet to many a lesser version, is the word Bitch. As a female dog, its use dates as early as the Old Norse bikkjuna. Its use as a term of contempt to women, though, began in the 1400s.

The word is first seen used this way in the Chester Plays of the 1400s. "Who callest thou queine, skabde bitch?" Basically, "Who are you calling a whore, you miserable bitch?”

"The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," published in 1811, calls bitch "the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore."

We have looked in depth at the etymology of several swear words on this blog before, all of which can be found listed in the comments section below...

But what of that which offends the religious? The term profane is from classical Latin profanus, literally "before (outside) the temple". It carried the meaning of either "desecrating what is holy" or "with a secular purpose" as early as the 1450s CE.

Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, considered sinful, and a direct violation of The Ten Commandments. Moreover, many Bible verses speak against swearing.

In Medieval times oaths were believed to physically injure Jesus Christ as he sat next to his Father in heaven. Phrases such as “by God’s bones” or “by God’s nails,” were looked upon as the opposite to ceremonies conjuring Christ’s physical body in a wafer and his blood in wine.

Goddamn followed and clearly compound word of "God" and "damn." "Damn" originates from the Latin damnare which means "to condemn." And God originated with Norse goth.

The French brought the two together by referring to the English as les goddems during the Hundred Years War because of their frequent profanity, according to Geoffrey Hughes' book, "A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths, and Profanity in English."

So which is your favourite to use and does it make you feel better to do so? Do you not swear or cuss at all? Whether you do, or not; you will never be censored when writing on Prose. So come all over our pages if you want, or fucking don’t if you don’t.

Until next time,

Prose

We worshiped salt and sand, 

stars and smoke. 

We ran down dirty streets

and stumbled into daydreams. 

We found, for the night, 

purpose for our once aimless hope.