Paradox Lost
Mixer in the afternoon
alright, on my third
but outside the Sun is frying
everything in its touch
everything regarding the city suffers
a famous, commercial writer once said
never place your desk in front of a window
sitting here now in the early afternoon
frontal lobe joggled just enough
head change
ice at the bottom of a glass
sings as sweetly as Simone with
the right timing
watching the tip of the mountain
burn from my window while I write
take advice from no one
if it goes against your gut
ignore and avoid kept men
with soft hands
in weak imitation of the greats
ignore their cries for attention
and self-promotion
while they use age as a gauge for
wisdom while their
wives fold their clothes for them
in the next room
which overlooks a tiled den
and a gorgeous yard
ignore the bullshit
to simply survive is not enough
while outside the mountain burns
and your words hit the page
with force
the reward is doing it
the reward is in the lift of heart
those of us who have made a living off
the writing will tell you it’s
a long and brutal fucker of a climb
but a climb with each second worth
more than a life
avoid the circles of trash, stench, and low-flying resilience
aspire to money for contentment
but be driven by neither
accept to banish
abolish to embrace
don’t place faith in
the existence of things you
cannot see
but place it in things
you know must be there
laugh at the sorrow
while the sorrow eats you
and outside the mountain burns
and sheds rocks like tears
the Sun disfigures dream
the life of us gripped
in the fist
of our own surrender
of fear
but spiked with moments
of unfathomable joy
of moments combined
in memory
that becomes our fortress and gate
our Mars and Pompeii
our sunlight, Liszt, and metal
our poets, singers, thespians, and
criminals of war
all the love inside
trapped but burning
beneath all the anger, waiting
beneath the unfathomed greatness
built in
moment to moment
the buzz gripping the mind
the time running out in this poem
before I start sounding like one of them
and feeling the oddly warm comfort
when you become what you despise
sitting here in the early afternoon
the dead men on my shelves
the dead women on my shelves
the dead-eye stare of a mountain
on fire
weeping across the desert west to
California
where I know beauty
must be waiting
while I sit here writing
ugly in desert
officially drunk
while the mountain burns
and laughs
at my stupid
fucking
face.
Arrogance!
Man went from killing one-by-one to murdering millions by every means imaginable.
We have lived on one planet.
Stepped on one moon.
Explored one solar system.
Observed one universe.
We do not know what we do not know.
Yet, in our ignorance, we boldly march with confidence under one banner:
“Arrogance!”
Cantina
Small town bar
whiskey and beer
and pool
bad yet good country spewing
from the juke
and forget the bullshit
the fucking news on your phone
the updates
and compulsion
the sad state of affairs
pervasive
sitting here buzzed
high as a giraffe's pussy
the next game breaks and I think
about Europe
or the feeling of Europe
or Europa
or who knows fuck
who cares
sophisticates
theorists
feminists
all of it can fuck straight off
in a house fire
none of them would exist
existing in flame is raw strength
but keep everything equal and careful
and dogshit safe
lest you offend
the ugly
progressives
but tonight's not about
those weak motherfuckers
not about Isis
or Trump
or Jenner
or whatever media
darling dominates
let's get back to love
to life
without a screen.
Tits and ass
and sunlight.
Shining through heart.
the world is
but a pulse
with shaved legs
and atrophy
and white beards
remembering glory.
All of us here now
waiting in flames.
matthew 14:22
i stopped praying the day i fell through the water. after forty days of nothing, i felt like it was time to shake the dust off my knees and stand up. i was flesh and bone and all my sins, which were greater than the sum of their parts.
when i was little, i felt god in my rib cage once or twice. i endured panic attacks before i knew what they were. my heart would start pounding fast but before it could shock me, a hand would slip between my bones and rock my heart back and forth to its beat.
you're safe now,
you're safe now.
i think it was faith.
the third time i felt god was different. the tent was set up in the front yard for the night, and the cats were keeping us awake. scratches and shadows on the fabric fought us, so we retreated inside.
i was the first to walk in through the front door, but i sensed a presence in front of me once i entered the living room.
do not be afraid,
for i am with you,
he said.
i wasn't truly scared,
but i nodded.
i was in sixth grade when i discovered the books named after a series of colors. each story was different, but they were all the same. a simple girl would make the wrong decision and choose to drink/have sex/puke/etc. until she was a wreck, but then she would repent and god would grant her a happy ending.
when i started coming undone in eighth grade, i remembered the stories, so i turned my bedroom into a chapel. i fell to my knees and lowered my head as i rested my shaking hands on my dresser. i sobbed and i prayed, just like they did in the books.
i'm sorry.
i regret all that i've done.
lord,
please grant me redemption.
forgive me.
i will change.
i will follow you forever.
i will never take your name in vain,
i promise.
i'll go to church every sunday,
and i'll pay attention,
and i'll do whatever you say,
just help me,
please, help me.
i don't want to be this way.
nothing. so i tried again two weeks later, and again when another two weeks went by. maybe it didn't work because i didn't believe what i was saying, but i sure as hell tried. but oceans didn't split and bushes didn't burn; there was no sign to show me where to turn after i had failed to become a believer. it got to the point where i begged to be a martyr, but god and my own demons kept me in the middle. i couldn't really live, and i couldn't die, so i gave up on both.
now i am the salt of the earth; i let life and death walk all over me. i have nothing left to say, nothing left to pray. i am finished scribbling psalms on my ceiling in the hopes that god will notice.
i am older,
wiser, now,
less susceptible to his holy ink.
sometimes i feel it a fourth time.
lord,
grant me the wisdom
to think.
Blood in/Mass shooting/Suicide out.
I remember walking home bloody
and walking in the front door
to the old man at the table
smoking cigarettes
with my mom
and when he asked me
what my problem was
I told him since we’d
moved there
a week ago
two boys older than me
two grades higher
were chasing and beating me
after school
while I tried to make it
across the field to our house
and every day it’s gotten
worse
until today when
they finally drew blood
my mother hustled to the
kitchen for the bottle of
shitty, burning-orange salve
to make the cuts worse and
while she rubbed it into the gaps of
blood and dirt and small rocks
in my knees and palms and forehead
the old man told me tomorrow on the way
home, I was to take my time across
the field, and when the two of them
stopped me
to punch the biggest one
square in the nose
and not to return home
until I did
and if I didn’t
then to plan on sleeping outside
without supper
or anything else
my mother started going on about
how she was going to call the school
and that I should report the
boys to the principal or vice principal
or to the teacher
but the old man saved me
the trouble of explaining
to her that no matter
how that was played out
I’d be labeled a rat
and I’d have it even worse
and the best way from A
to Z was a straight line
and it was time for me
to start figuring things
out and she started inventing
ways I could reason with the
boys, or how they could talk to
their parents, all the other angles
but he we wasn’t budging
and even after I left the room
they kept it going
I barely slept that night
because I took the old man
seriously
with his long beard
and tattooed fingers
back when no other dad had
such things
and also because I didn’t know
how to throw a punch
or if I could even reach the
bastard’s nose
and I was terrified
but the day was over
and I walked the field home
and the two boys were
there
and the books and folders
and backpack were again
knocked out of my hands
and I was again shoved to the
ground
and my adrenaline was boosted
and I could feel the old man
somehow watching me
and I went ahead and
brought it up
and hit the big one
on the nose
and the blood spat sideways
and he went down instantly
screaming a high pitched wail
while his buddy ran off
and a crowd formed and
I picked up my shit
walked home
where my knuckles
throbbed and my mom
wrapped my hand with
ice crushed in a wet wash rag
and the old man laughed
and nodded at me
and told me
once I took shit once,
I’d take it for the rest
of my life
and from then on
I had no trouble at school
but today this would be
“offensive”
and barbaric
the old man would be in jail
or slapped with some lawsuit
and
I’d be a pariah
and we’d be all over YouTube
today, instead of teaching our children to
truly stand up for themselves
they revert to their natural
forms of confusion
and cut their own flesh or
they blow each other away or
they commit suicide
on the Internet
due to
bullying.
flickering tongue and your rattling scales
Another one from the table
a track from The Church floating
out from the speakers in the living room
-f.m. radio for a change of pace-
fucking beautiful song
last time I heard this track was almost
the first time
driving through the farmland
on I5 headed toward
Fresno or someplace shit-awful
a year into the new century
little black Nissan pickup
my dog next to me
the sunset smeared across the
fields’ horizon outside the window
a laborer dream
but real as day
while I wrapped my head around
the next job site
the mornings waking up in the
back under the canopy
all my things pushed to the sides
around the wheel wells
my dog sleeping behind my knees
the redneck foreman pissing
in the cold dirt
a foot away from my
truck
the half-ass drive to the
gas station for coffee
water
soda
cigarettes
beef jerky
Excedrin
whatever the crew needed
to get the metal barns
built
the canvas roofs pulled
and tied
the stakes anchored into the
ground to pull the cables taught
street or dirt
didn’t matter
pound that shit down
get the site ready for
the fat and rich
weirdos with their
horses and spoiled brats
custom horse trailers
RVs that cost more
than most homes
rarely did we have to see them
but when we did it
was during tear-down
when we’d circle back through
from a different part
of I5, whether it was Burbank
or Monroe, Washington
or whether it was from
Highway 97
from Burns, Oregon
up
to Spokane
didn’t matter
the shit had to come down
and we had to make it happen
on time
any hangover
any breakdown
any type of human
condition outside of the job
was binary
including pain
or fatigue from the weight of
all the things we carried for
16 hours a day
But The Church’s
Reptile played
through the sunset
through the time knowing
that I knew where I was
where I wanted to be
a ghost off the grid
cheap pay
sleep outside
but there was a chain gang
rush to it
I couldn’t deny
or define
sore skin
the blood from
blisters or exploded
roof jacks
or from flat out
dropping to your knees
carrying a door across
a stretch of dirt and horse shit
I looked at the CD cover on the
bench-seat next to my dog
some free-shit-compilation CD
pushed on me at
the last coffee house
no radio signal
burned out on my music
so I surfed the CD and caught the
beginning of the song
and let it play out
and it was good there
in the truck
in the dream of fatigue
in the stretch of miles beating south
cast aside the sunset
the fields
watching
the torn sky
bleeding
mauve
down the
fading yellow
fields
black at their tips
the song playing
driving through
it with a film
covering me
that wouldn’t burn off
without something
outside of the job
something human
binary
something I couldn’t
figure out
but
the job was done
and I left that lifestyle
after a year or so
and now it’s
almost 2016
and I sit here
at the table
in my bungalow
waiting for the maid service
to show up
slamming coffee
downloaded the song to
my phone
add to playlist
I kill the radio
and hit play
on the little screen
and watch the room
sitting fair in
what I’ve asked for
waiting to see the cover
for the new book
set to drop in the spring
waiting to hear back from
people I used to read about
regarding collaboration
on scripts
all of that
but still waiting
for something
to burn off the film
to pull whatever it is
up or down from where
it rests
from where it hides out
and fucks with me.
The Practice of Preach.
You should do it like this..
The opening line, in an age old line of ego elevation.
To acquaint another with their own demerits, is better, for some, than all the endorphins drugs or drink could ever harvest.
Eat this, it's got this in it.
This is good for you.
This will make you feel better.
Read this, it's helped me so much.
When *insert deity of choice* is in your life you need no more.
To ease yourself by advising another how well your manic addiction could also ease them.
To cover up the fact you need an addiction to fill the void, just like everybody else.
Even if your addiction isn't antisocial it doesn't make it any less rabidly fanatic.
Take this heroin, you will unhesitatingly become more desirable to yourself.
Why go through this life hating the one person you spend every single minute of it with? And you only get the one, life, so spend it high.
God put these plants here for us, man.
Eat this kale, you will unhesitatingly become more desirable to yourself.
Why go through this life pig-set, jaundice and despondent? And you only get the one, spend it healthy.
God put these plants here for us, man.
One, obviously, makes your flesh sore with legions and your veins turn to rubber, whilst the other makes you glow like a new born baby with the lungs of a Himalayan sherper.
But the addiction emanates from the same sickness, does it not?
We preach to save ourselves and no one else.
We give praise to our own self worth simply by knowing another's lifestyle, spirituality or impulses are subjacent to our own.
We trick it into believing itself with the practice of a preach.
Natural selection for the ego.
Ego-eat-ego world.
Yet deeper still, does anyone, say anything, to anyone, for any other reason than to make themselves feel better about themselves?
Being nice, as nice as it is, is it just an excuse to convince yourself that you are in fact a nice person?
Not to advocate non-niceness.
Just a cerebration on human conditions.
We're designed selfish by default, a basic survival mechanism.
Selfdom to survive.
Preach to survive.
Give to survive.
Heal to survive.
Self conservation, but to what end?
So you can continue the progress of human race, of course.
But then!
Oh, yes, then..
You shall give for love!
Preach for love!
Heal for love!
But is it that new life not just an extension of you?
A chance to succeed where you failed so lamentably?
Or just another inbuilt mechanism to chaperon your species away from the teeth of extinction?
Yet the question behind all of these, one to which we will never know an answer, why the species at all?
To what purpose do we serve?
An answer of 'no purpose' could never be enough for machines designed to persevere and preserve, so just try not to think of that at all.
Or, find God.
But don't feel bad.
You didn't spark the air with evolution.
You were just born of self.
But, hold on, wait just a New York minute.. if all self is in yourself, there is no ego, for the ego is in the ether!
That is the best solution created by an ego to preach in order to feel egoless I've ever known and I'm sticking with it.
One love..
But to what end?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
The rhyming of the above, with round the bend, is no coincidence at all.
“Why Prose.?” -Angela Doll Carlson
When I began to write poetry I thought the process consisted of throwing words on a page. I thought to simply say exactly what I thought and meant, with line breaks and punctuation placed here and there, or, perhaps not at all, was a poem. Poems were mud pies. How hard can it be?
I like mud pies and I wrote them for a very long time. But mud pies could not feed me or anyone else. I would write them and admire them there on the page all while washing my hands, drying them on soft towels and getting back to the business of daily living. Those mud pies were not memorable except for occasional smudges I’d find on the floor or in between my fingers. The makings of the mud pies were what remained. And if I showed them to people, I was met with a pat on the head or words of mild encouragement.
“It’s a very nice mud pie,” they might say.
When I began to study poetry and wander into writing deeper and longer works I found myself less likely to use mud alone. I studied the great poets, some I knew already like Poe and Dickinson, others were unknown to me at that time, Cummings, Bukowski and Plath. I veered into the ancient with Rumi; I skated shakily into the modern with Nikki Giovanni and Mary Oliver. I found my heart expand with each new discovery. I worked those mud pies well, graduating to flour, to pastry, to rolling pin, to oven.
Instead of showing simply muddy hands and inedible pie plates I offered now scent and taste- blueberry, lemon, key lime. Meat pies were within reach adding texture and form.
Poetry is more than words on a page. It is depth and reaching, aching and mercy. Poetry says all the things you mean to say and more. It tells, it shows, it succeeds and it fails. As poets, we allow for that. We rely on that. We hope for that.
I began to write prose as a form as an adult, when my kids were finally in school. I began to use my poetic leanings and knead the words into longer thoughts, sentences stretched out like braids of dough. I would thread them one through the other in story. For me, writing non-fiction short form personal essay was the path of poetry into prose. And for me, the path yields the stuff that fills the banquet table I mean to set. I want it to be beautiful and rich, satisfying and intriguing.
Writing provides an insight into myself that I need. I want to read the words on the page and find in them some new discovery, some new depth I did not recognize before. I resonate with the words of author Joan Didion when she states, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Writing poetry started that process for me, writing longer form intensifies that process and brings it more toward completion.
Spending time on the mobile or web platform of Prose gives me an opportunity to experiment and get immediate feedback, something that most of us as writers do not have the chance to receive. We are often so isolated in our writing. Who can understand that desire to make mud pies? Who can stand to wait long enough for us to move into pastry and meat? It’s a long process and it takes nurturing and care, waiting for the dough to rise, the heat to bake, the air to cool. Prose allows us to share our work in progress and to share in that process along with fellow writers. It is a sort of online writer’s group, a community of support and encouragement no matter where one falls on the pie-making spectrum.
Why Prose? Because we are makers and the world is hungry.
- Angela Doll Carlson, A.K.A. @mrsmetaphor
A little slice of pi for your journey
Pi,
dressed up nicely
as a radian,
will get you across the Pacific,
more or less,
with an extended layover in Hawai’i.
We recommend the Royal Mahalo Hotel
on WaoWao Beach.
Get a king room with
DVD player and remote
with extra batteries.
Lotsa mana, that space.
In summer, you can stretch pi
liberally, given its impressive
tensile strength,
and hit Kamchatka,
but who the hell would ever
wanna visit Kamchatka,
except to mine for ancient
vodka rocks?
Me? I’d opt for an air drop
over Macau.
The pretty girls,
long legs and short memories,
all with Master’s degrees
and an outstanding
positive mental attitude,
you know.
For that round-the-world cruise,
though, you may need the whole ring:
2 x pi x Mother Earth radius.
Beware of giant floating rocks
at the higher latitudes.
If you’re in a hurry
and need to get to
the moon, say,
we suggest the cycloid
and a million joules
of carrot juice,
which is really just a metaphor
for a shitload of rocket fuel
and a child’s prayer.
Fasten your seatbelt.
And don’t forget your tray table.
And, for the truly discerning frequent flier,
may we suggest the Slingshot Express*,
a spicy mix of pi, active uranium,
discarded wishes and a kilo of pono
that will launch even a sizable ass
like yours [just sayin’]
well into Earth orbit
for many many years,
allowing you and your Plus-One
to experience a soundless
and, quite literally,
endless summer
from 234,000 feet above
everything you can possibly think of.
*The fine print:
This is a one-way flight, dear,
so please say aloha-ciao to loved ones
and do pack appropriately.
I know what you’re thinking
99.230597235. Death frequencies do not exist.
43.14. I'm too old for you.
93.4582. Your boobs are too small.
13.5093464. I think too much.
92375.3946. She drinks a lot.
83.93284667. They aren't very nice to each other.
9.014094853. The kid should be spanked once a day (really hard).
21.92735628765. People really are mean.
1.000000043. Priests should wed.
8.89235. The threads bare themselves,
Eventually.
8435.230975. Skin that glistened,
Desiccated.
395.1209775463. Diaphanous blue, now
Grey.
7.239074. We must die at sixty-five.
59.12494. Bars are not for the lonely.
9275.235235235. Panties: 3 for 1, $9.
12.254235747. Sing just once.
11.135409775. Cherry ChapStick.
8.989734. Monistat.
2.23509723587. Margaritaville.
1.109284. Ice to snow, not shaved.
1.8914875143. She was only 19 when the firetruck slammed into her VW. It was responding to a brush fire down the street. I read the papers. Her mother Joan cried once then never again. Moved out from 336 and walked all the way to California, then Mexico.
1.108509723. Love was not lost the day she died. It never was to begin with.
Her mother destroyed her things.
Why?
I wanted them. Her boy-jeans. The ones I peeled off her that night.
1.01835973498673589. Or was that a creamy wish, too?
7.230597235. All boobs are perfect.
3.092385. My thoughts spring until morning, then it's your turn at the wheel.
2.09283654. Drink up, my dear, bar's closing.
85.9872350. Really now, they're just brother and sister.
3.45987371. Child abuse starts in utero.
3.23097235876. People don't suck, their parents do.
2.3897528947. The Jesuits rape their nuns. It is doctrine since 15-something.
21.2123124. Diffuse . . . dissipate . . . disappear. Glowing still.
If you wait long enough.
84.12234552. Cinnamon skin at zero hour.
6.230958. Eyes never sleep. They see notes of purple in the dark.
9.0928730957. I know what you're thinking:
2093757534.2355. This makes 854 grams of nonsense.
235424. 2356543. Ah, but it does, my dear. Liz told me so in a dream today.
3.5346346. She died at 19 in 1981. Or was it '82?
3.21525345. Our second to last phone call: going to Luxembourg, we!
3.4232376784265. Last call: fuck off on down the highway.
3.24859674124. Okay, see ya!
3.21525345. Wake up:
And the tick-tock starts over again.
3.2152534538574745. Yes, my sweet, I know what you're thinking:
Drop by drop in small measures,
Elevated before its time,
Love my way or that highway where she died, the space where her ghost wanders from the brush in the wee hours of summer morn.
3.21525345761654876238746. Autumn news: being in love with you, dear girl.
First winter chill, blue goes to grey.
Right frequency, you can hear her siren-call,
That mournful cry of the little red firetruck.
Took her moistness from the earth.
3.21525345871546723. I know what you're thinking,
because we are one, no longer anyone.
99.2305972352. Ah, but they do!