Poetry is best created

After the moment passes

And you breathe.

In.

Out.

Air flows through you,

Brushing your hair softly,

Reminding you gently,

Though the trees fall

And the oxygen gets low,

Manna still falls at night.

My traditions lie like a forest after a fire,

Cracking and black and unfruitful.

The life that once chattered and sang

Whether the sun shone bright above

Or stars twinkled to their tunes

Scurried off to protect themselves,

Leaving the house vicitm to the elements.

Despite seeing the world around me,

The Mayans may have struck bigger

Than any Gregorian or Julian calendar

Ever dreams since it still stands, evidence

Of the union of arithmetic and faith

Raising nature to work for society

Yet never bend to break under pressures.

How I wish nature raised me like Tarzan

(Maybe with thirty-percemt less racism),

So the smoldering trees and blackened soil

Would not ignite such fear and pain and pining

For better days that feel uncertain

Despite the gleam on the horizon.

As the story goes, the ancestors came in boats,

Severed the cord and spilled the blood

Of the children of the earth centuries ago

And used the red earth to make brick for houses,

Roads, infrastructure, indoor plumbing,

Washing machines and ovens, things we thank

The Heavens and kiss God's feet for, and laugh

That we could not live without these blessed items

Built by pioneering pillagers' slaves and children

Of the land stolen and violated and trampled.

Winter lie on the horizon, and the chill wraps us.

Lying on the warm ground, savoring the embers,

I dream of a day again when the vibrant forest

Lives and sings and dances once again.

Lord, I ask for aid with this prompt. I can only think to compare it to writing a personal prayer on a chalkboard. I've only said the scripted prayers before in public, the Hail Marys and such, that you memorize and sit next to the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. I can't possibly speak how I do in private with You. I can't cry the tears or sing the praises that one only loses themselves in in Your presence. But, to tell You the truth, there is one little thing bothering me. Confessional is a little sacrilegious, right?

Embers crackling,

My fingers slipping,

Letting the gas can

Clamour to my side.

Our memories simmer

Under heaps of kindling.

Keys, wallet, cell phone

Brown hair, pleading eyes

It all goes up in flames.

Chia's heart pounded in her chest as the officer's slow steps approached the Cadillac. She held the pale squirming baby tightly in her arms. She could see Artie's charcoal hands gripping the steering wheel. The officer shined the bright bluish-white light in their faces.

"Where you coloreds going?" He grumbled.

"Missus want us to take her and the babe into Baltimore to see her husband."

The cop looked in the backsest where the little Italian woman was curled over onto herself, deep in a fitful sleep. The police officer tapped on the window but the woman scarcely stirred.

"Please, suh," Artie said.

"Shut up, boy." The officer was jouned by another one now who was shining a bright light at Chia and making the baby cry. "Why ain't she wakin up?"

"She deaf, suh. Deaf and dumb since she a lilun."

The first officer looked at the woman, the baby, then the pair of black people in the front seat. He made a face and peered at his partner, who shrugged.

"Your tail light is out," the officer said. Breaking glass was heard. "Fix it."

The pair of officers left, and Chia sighed.

"Did I do good?" Angelica asked.

"Perfect."

Bubbling to the surface, I feel the tension rising far too late to stop it. The foaming of the love-drunk, confused, hurt heart that hits a scar on a snag and remembers all over again the initial cut. Ms. Crow may have pined that the first cut is the deepest, but the madness that infects it hurts the worst. The anguish of blindness towards every lover as my fingers atumble to decipher the Braille of what he's done now. There are never words gentle enough or precise enough to explain that this is the little transgression that pushed Montresor over the edge and made him kick down a wall in an abandoned cellar for his dearly beloved, Fortunato. There is never a good time to reveal the skeletons of stillborn loves in my closet, killed because the lungs couldnt form or the heart didn't beat or the brain didn't develop fast enough for me.

This burgeoning bud is the closest I've gotten to loving anything so genuinely in years, since the last implantation nearly tore me in two when it was ripped out. I now fret over every quickening, not sure if they are butterflies or the early warning signs of a miscarriage. He's too far to assuage any doubts and most remedies are just placebos for the looming question I used to whisper into dandelions before blowing away the seeds and germinating everything in the nearby vicinity with a spreading virus. Love me, love me not. Love me. Love me not. Love me. Get this mass of feelings that can quickly turn into a gasp of sobs or a burst of uncontrollable hot anger and hold it tightly. Love me not. Uproot yourself and walk like a mangrove tree before the seed has enough time to wrap its fibrous roots around you and forces you to be part of its growing process.

Winter is coming, a time when madness gets harder. Dandelion seeds spread by the broken-spirited start to pick and bloom and fight for a place. Viciously and savagely cutting others off like you hear in songs. Misery Business is the work of a dandelion, taught from birth how it's a weed no one wants, and how it will strangle anyone it's near. But I've gone Rogue and tried it anyway, allowed myself to be vulnerable, and got the Angel's wings cut off. Now I sit alone in the wilderness, waiting for the night to be over, wondering if you'll come back again and keep coming back the next day and the one after, or if I've overstepped some unseen boundary and lost another one.

Better sipped like fine wine, we butcher poetry like college kids desperate to get drunk. Heavy-handed, clunky, and telling lines full of red-ink like in third grade when the form is first unfurled like a fragile baby revealed to its older siblings who longed for it, cared for it and spoke to it softly through the mother's belly. Neither had any idea the torment it would be put through, how poetry would beae scars inflicted upon it by hurt and jealous hearts that pine for love, long for death, and dream of suicide. Left in the most random places, naked, for all to see. From bathroom stalls to spitballed Bostonian pavements, poetry is dropped and forgotten by its maker, who just needed to scream a few lines. There are no edits. There is no technique. Only the too few connoiseurs who still sip their wine and wrap up cozily with poetry and perform careful vivisections of every detail to get the picture. With patience and poise, these few still run their eyes along the wrinkled fabric of emotions and paint an image as they smooth out the edges, pressing and steaming and wiggling, to create a tapestry out of the coil of words they weaved together.

Slipping my arms under the belt,

Carefully stringing the polyester gently

Across the lap that sat on yours,

The belly that quaked with laugher

As I squirmed away from tickles,

I strapped in your oldest grandkid.

Howdy. For those that are new here, I'm AJ and like many of you, I write and like to help other people that write. I haven't been super active lately, and while I'm not here to talk about why I am here, I do feel bad because the things in my life have kept me from helping out a few people with their writing (shout out to @prettyscaries - follow her, she's lovely). My grandfather passed almost a year ago, which hit hard since when my great-aunt passed, I thought I was fine and then... I was in a mental hospital for ten days. So that was fun. In that time, I've gone through a bunch of different jobs and men and yeah, being an adult suchs. Any minors here, the teens isn't your peak, but trust me, you'll find yourself pining for things you fucking despite now.

I digress. I'm here to say that I'm not online all the time, especially not on Prose, and I probably won't be putting out too many stories. I'm working on an animated show that I'm pretty invested in. Given my track record, I'm not sure how long it'll be before my brain is like, "Meh, let's go write about a dolphin with a porn addiction" so I'm chugging along pretty hard to make sure I get as many notes and resources as possible. However, I also spend a considerable amount of time on Reddit (remember that mental breakdown? It led me right to Reddit), and while I love it there, I get really frustrated with the critiques on the writing subs. In fact, a lot about the writing sub can be so unhelpful and pretentious. Plus, it feels like nothing is organized in a way to get people to what they want to find.

So, yesterday, I finally pushed myself to make a subreddit that I have been wanting to for awhile. The sub is called The Writing Rug (just take out the spaces) and is tailored to be like a writing class. The goal at least is to be able to provide feedback and help people get good, useful feedback and banning people who try to discourage writers. I also want to be able to funnel my writing advice that I've given into one place, share the piles of resources I've hoarded over the years (it's a problem, I know), and help people succeed at writing. Since I believe most people I follow (I think there's some bot accounts in there from that debacle) have a lot of potential, I figured I'd share it. Granted, it's obviously still under construction with the goal to be going smoothly by late Septenber, but if you do have a writing question or need advice on something or just wanna see what I'm talking about to be nice (thanks by the way), this could interest you. Anywho, that's my spiel. Thanks for watching! Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Cue the TV static!