Jane’s Addiction, being a dog, feathery tops in the valley, and everything that follows.
Premiering now: In number seventeen from Prose. Radio, Jane's Addiction sees the ocean break on the shore, while in the city a group of writers from the site bring it back to soil with each of their own literary footprints.
Here's the link to the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U33WX-dLTZ4
And here are all the pieces in the feature:
https://www.theprose.com/post/808204
https://www.theprose.com/post/807185/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/785150/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/783763/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/806394/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808549/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808564/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808547
https://www.theprose.com/post/808080/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/808371/...
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Toxic Soup
In the murky depths of our modern existence lies a cauldron of toxicity, simmering with the noxious vapors of deceit, greed, and disillusionment. The air is thick with the acrid stench of political discord, where truth is a casualty and integrity a relic of a bygone era. Society churns in the turbulent waters of technological advancement, drowning in a deluge of information, yet starving for genuine connection. In this suffocating atmosphere, human empathy wanes, replaced by a callous indifference, leaving souls adrift in a sea of isolation. This is the toxic soup we’ve brewed, a bitter concoction of our own making, where the once-clear waters of morality have become clouded by the sediment of our collective discomfort and relentless pursuit of greed for survival.
In the face of such a tempest, one can only hold fast to the fragile hope that amidst the chaos, a glimmer of redemption may yet emerge. And as the pendulum of power swings with reckless abandon, one cannot help but wonder: who will emerge victorious in the political arena, Only time will tell, as the electorate braces itself for another round of the age-old dance between hope and disillusionment.
I do not wish for seconds.
The Thief
Luke 23:1-56
The men who hung beside Christ were thieves in this world and were caught. There was no escape for them. They had earned what they now faced: punishment, shame, and suffering.
How they chose to spend what little time they had left on earth was curious to me. The first thief outwardly mocked Christ. The other questioned His identity and claims of deity. The latter ultimately decided to believe and was assured a place in paradise that very day.
The “how” did not bother me as much as the “why”.
The thief gets to go to heaven, but why? Why is this even acceptable? He didn't “earn” it. So he is a screw up his whole life but he gets a free pass right at the end?
The story stuck with me; it was unsettling for reasons I could not place. It irked me to be missing some key understanding. However, the answer would arise repeatedly, in subtle and at times, astounding ways throughout my life: grace.
This thief was not a member of a religious organization, nor had he the opportunity to make a public statement of faith with a water baptism, nor had he paid any tithes to his church. It had been impossible for him to “earn” his salvation with these human-approved rituals. What he did do was believe.
He simply believed and was saved by grace through faith.
Because of grace, we do not get what we deserve. No other realization has ever humbled me more than when I could finally piece together the spiritual implications of the thief on the cross. The magnitude of grace is unfathomable to my human comprehension, yet I am filled with gratitude.
This story gives me hope because I know that I too am nothing more than a thief in this world. Yet, I believe.
Everything is Clear Even Under the Darkest Night
Our coastal city lies in perpetual twilight of a dream. The pollution paints the sunsets in colors of sickly pink, tempting citizens to commit a sin. Our water supply is poisoned with copper and fears, and even our faucets weep at night. Our air is bitter, our soul pours out, and everything we taste is seasoned with tears. On the street corner, a faceless man turns to me, pleading: "When your sweetheart is six months pregnant with your child, take a marker and write in bold letters on her belly - 'I am the murderer of your passions'".
I woke up, and behold - it was a dream.
Each morning I wake up from my bitter dreams into a reality where nothing stirs: I watch all those blurry figures walking in the public space without any fuel of desire and feel that there's some great essential matter around here that I'm missing. I remain spellbound by the dream until evening, when its magic fades as I encounter my monochromatic reality.
I don’t know what's wrong with my mechanism, but almost every relationship I had at some point turned into that evening breeze that comes from the sea and threatens to crumble wishes into rust.
Many times it's hard for you to break free from it, you don't want to hurt people and make her realize what a fatal mistake she made when she chose you somewhere under the dome of the sky, as you kissed and promised her your eternal love. Too bad girls can't tell when you've already broken up with them in your heart, long before they impose their nakedness upon you.
I still imagine that one day I will meet someone who will possess a truth that no one else can speak. That her big eyes will shout to me: "let's do vandalism together, not out of hatred, God forbid, but out of enormous love". And my own eyes will respond: "My love. You are all I have. You and I are from the same quarry of precious stones". I also deserve a small sample of it.
She will surely have thick lips and an enormous chest that will contain within it everything a man yearns for. And she will be very beautiful, although beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it's an integration of components that communicate with each other and with you.
But just as long as she has thick lips. Maybe she exists somewhere and will burst into my life in a storm, and then we'll meet at night in high places and I'll hold her hand under the meteor shower so she won't be afraid of the falling star upon her. I just need to maintain cautious optimism; anyway, it's a hundred times easier for me to find good sex than true love in this city.
In the meantime, maybe I'll meet someone, not for the sake of profit (that includes mutual exchanges of body fluids). We'll talk about the deepest truths of the heart, without falling victim to our sexual boredom. Maybe there will also be a spark and then we'll meet and order a bastard bottle of whiskey and unleash havoc upon it, for all eyes to witness.
I believe in my ability to do this; I just need to gather some ambition to battle my evolutionary urges that impose temporary desires on me, and to demonstrate more responsibility in the personal realms between male and female, even if I know that the sin hides somewhere in the allure of first intoxications.
I roll another cigarette.
The day passes by and it's getting late, but everything is clear even under the darkest night. Now everything makes sense to me. I began to fall asleep on the sofa, and from the forming dream I begin to hear her voice and mine blending together in a passion without an end.
Sartre’s mistake, beneath a jealous moon, purification, and a black-eyed man.
Lucky number 13 for Prose. Radio, with (unintended) a lucky number of 7 talents featured. We'll link the pieces here below so you can bear witness to the beauty...
The work is as varied as it is lifting.
Here's the link to the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlSbnMtA6gs&t=311s
What else...
Oh, of course:
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Featured pieces: https://www.theprose.com/post/807643/...
https://www.theprose.com/post/807359 https://www.theprose.com/post/807620/... https://www.theprose.com/post/806772/... https://www.theprose.com/post/805931/... https://www.theprose.com/post/806372/... https://www.theprose.com/post/805881/...
A Caged Bird.
Here I sit, adrift in silence's solemnity,
My fingers, veins bulging, battle against the machine's demand.
Focal dystonia halts their dance, as sweat turns to rivers,
Yet the relentless demand persists, coercing me to write,
As if they believe I find solace in this torment.
In my youth, I was taught that dreams materialize,
But now, my only vision is freedom, elusive yet palpable.
I long for release from these steel confines,
For a life beyond the suffocating grip of obligation.
Still, I surrender to the typewriter's call,
Each keystroke a reminder of my captivity.
But amidst the struggle, one thought sustains me:
My family, my anchor in this storm.
If I should meet my end before this unforgiving page,
Let them know that every word was written with love,
That my sacrifice was not in vain,
And that my longing for freedom was their legacy.
Tru
The sun rises over Baltimore, and I feel like a sanctimonious prick for writing that line. I've been up all night, to no good. Staying in a room for the night I surely cannot afford due to the shit head landlord of the previous room I had rented being a abhorrent bitch.
That shit be the title of my book. I think, at least. I think a lot of things, and most of them end me up in situations like these.
Sometimes they take me down the path of fortune and success but save for a few moments in my life - maybe more than a few but less than many. Many of the thoughts that pass through my head are of little value at all. I tell myself that, at least.
I tell myself a lot of things that scare me into seeking escapist oblivion like alert awareness of my surroundings. A brightening and tweaking of my perception through women, through drugs and alcohol, through adrenaline or war.
Apparently the fear I feel when I think the doomsday scenario possibilities up in my head that become more realistic every day are the only ones I give value to, therefore leading to the inching further of my own destruction.
They're all one and the same, then again, many of the thoughts that pass through my head are of little value at all. Things that I tell myself are like a shipwrecked man talking to a effigy of his best friend.
Maybe that's true for all of us, but seemingly not all of us. Since the suited men that walk and drive and take the train down the side walk, street, and railways around here always seem to be put together.
I used to be one of them, but never for very long. I've been one in spurts and binges of functionality that always lead me back to where I am right now.
Winning the genetic lottery means exactly jack shit if you can't make use of in life. Not with the self destructive streak that cuts like a bowie knife on a hot day through a stick of butter into everything you try to accomplish, god forbid you accomplish it.
I sometimes really can't believe anyone would fictionalize and entertain with the lifestyle that fucks up everything in mine. The romanticized warrior alcoholic poet who completely tornadoes and nukes everything in his life including the food he eats and the women he fucks.
I had cut off my hair to get back to my high and fucked days of yesteryear. Mistake. Of course. Oh well. Most of the space on my white board has run out, better get a chalk board to fit this one in because god knows the shit is running into the hundreds between women, wars, and wickedness.
Plato 2024, balcony ants, starry-eyed and decayed, and a thing about Lila.
A spontaneous recording session from a found piece of gold ignited the twelfth episode over at Prose. Radio. We'll add the piece and writer in the comments. Nothing says Tuesday like black coffee and a bittersweet story. Gets no better.
Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_h3z8MM2M&t=116s
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Firelight
“I suppose I did
love her,” Braelyn said.
A log crackled, spit
glowing flecks against
the dark. She might have
had more to say, but
not to us.
I sat with Ashley in
tree-broken moonlight
watching her sister,
drinking. Ashley leaned
close, shared my jacket
while the fire fell. We
cooked nothing and told
no stories. We sat with
Braelyn, watching embers
fade to ash.
March 11, 2024
I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.
Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.
I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.
Knowing her story, her suffering,
intimately by age 9,
I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.
I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.
I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.
I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.
I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.
I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.
I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.
She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.
And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.
I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.
There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.
The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.
I do not belong to either world and I never will.
But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.
I am a phoenix.
Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.