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Last
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112 Posts • 212 Followers • 708 Following
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Cover image for post Before the Thaw, by Last
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Last in Poetry & Free Verse
10 reads

Before the Thaw

When I think I'd like, somehow

to alt, shift, delete... the iceberg...

myself, I shudder at human frailty

the aww that would make more,

into less... melting it

for immediate comfort

...sacrificing our depths

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Cover image for post To Winter's end, by Last
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Last in Poetry & Free Verse
44 reads

To Winter’s end

Thanks for the flowers sketched

just outside the window's pane

ours is the beauty fleeting

on glass

fingers leave the remembrance

of heat... a halo

around the frost,

as the wind blows the dusts...

stirring something inside of us

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Challenge
$1,000 Haiku Challenge
Write a haiku about anything. And we mean anything. Winner will be decided by likes. Give us your best, or favorite, 5-7-5 syllable opus to cover rent, or make a dream date. Lift us, drop us, make us laugh, cry, marvel, be inspired...you get it. Oh, and refer someone new to Prose. to participate in this challenge with you and get a $1 credit. May the best piece win. And...GO!
Cover image for post {it could be anything}, by Last
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Last
102 reads

{it could be anything}

... The word, is violent

Thunderclap, on night blue back

Relief...! The [ ] cries out...

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Challenge
The Emerald Challenge
Write the first chapter of your autobiography. If you already have it written, that's just fine: Post it. Thinly veiled fiction? Also just fine. Gritty and pure fiction to make us gush, well, that's fine, too. It's your story, but we want it. We also look forward to giving back to our current subscribers, and getting to know our new ones. Winner is based on likes.
Cover image for post The Autobiography of Laurel Last, by Last
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Last
56 reads

The Autobiography of Laurel Last

They call it autobiography because it the story that writes itself.

It is never about you, really, but about the somebody adjacent that made the plot possible.

It is like rendering a parabola; the bio requires two points, mirroring every interval. There is the vertex, the focus, the directrix, and the axis of symmetry, that links the entirety.

I don’t remember how I was born, and I suppose none of us truly do, except by the stories told to us, and these become integral, as having certain prospective truth; that which will shape us. Along the same line, I recall vaguely what I did yesterday, but not as well as I recollect certain fiction that I’ve poured over; and it makes me incomprehensively sad that these tales won’t be read the same way, as we tread into the future.

Each book itself an incarnation, a character. I remember my Cervante’s Don Quixote, an ochre cloth bound double volume boxed set, the print so intricate and fine I could not parse through the bundle, succumbing to fatigue, and I surmised that it was a part of the plot, quixotic. I remember, my beloved Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. I covered this one in old brown shopping paper, like might be used at butcher shop. The cover crumbling, and the pages so deeply nicotined they made a tobacco chewer’s smile seem merely ecru. And I remember too my old charming French existential story collection, whose pages were so lacework brittle, that a little triangle remained in the hand if a corner was inadvertently dog eared. I had proffered scotch tape to bandage, but the new material resulted in three breaks instead of one, and so repair proved futile.

I wonder how many of you are left, reading, even if scrolling down with a finger, rolling along paragraphs, on a cold plastic screen. I want you to know, if I were a book, I’d be warm white fine-tooth vellum with the letters so emphatically pressed that they’d left an indent on the page, with serifs.

Life, I’ve learned is about accepting the wasting of time.

I am cynically honored that you are making this observation with me— that way we can both reassure each other that it is only partly true.

We have this dilemma at the outset in our autobiography: I will write what flows from synapsis to fingertips; You will read it, and what backpedals from retina to the conscious, shall be an entity almost entirely unique to yourself.

We can agree in this way to some sliding-scale co-authorship. This is the first moment of our past, present and tomorrow. And now what to do with this space?

Fill it, of course.

You will walk down these same steps. Careful! They are deteriorating on the left-hand side, and there is only one rail. By luck it is on the right, going down. The steps are generous, four feet wide and walking alone there is a reasonable sense of confidence. Walking side by side, together, it is best to hold hands, just in case. On the dilapidated edge, is the appearance of wilderness…

There are blackberries, the uncultivated kind that are hard, bright red, and small, but these will ripen in the fullness of summer sun into juicy purple capsules of C vitamins and sunshine. It’s a promise of health in the impulse to forage. Pushing beyond the briars, there are exposed areas of packed dirt and half buried rocks, promising uncertain footing. A tangle of vines obscures the way, but it seems as if a warm marshy clearing lies just a bit farther. Pausing, we can hear the soothing pulse of running water. Maybe a creak or deeper stream. It is deceptive we know because calm waters run deep and small waters are likewise quiet. There is a temptation to cross the tattered edge of the stairs, that Nature is trying to reclaim, and ascertain what is what...

To the right lies a manicured garden. It has a pebbled path, and the lawn beckons into a maze. It’s manmade, but its structure inevitably replicates the order of the cosmos in neat compactness. One component of the design chains to another; and forms layers like skin, arteries, and substructures, to hold it all upright. The branches of the thorned hedges have been bleached in the afternoon sun into stark blanched living-skeletons, one on top of another, ornamented by fairly uniform little leaves with marron veins and serrated edges turning from yellow to green. These are variously sized yet arguably identical to a mother pattern. Each new branch birthing more tiny leaves, eventually crowning them with rosette blossoms of gradient pinks and purples, blushing in the morning and all the more so in the evening. The hedges are precisely clipped.

At the top of the stairs, we look again, from the right to the left; and we agree to explore them both, separately.

* * *

Tomorrow, we will...

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Cover image for post The Lifelong, by Last
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Last in Micropoetry
52 reads

The Lifelong

Start, stop, start, stop...

but never on, off, as it were

that is how we are, not object

and God gives permission

for thoughts to wander,

Ribbons grow arms, legs

reconfigure themselves

in parallel... wrapped

Word and its problems,

falling in, over again

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Cover image for post ৻৲ . . . . . . . . . . . ., by Last
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Last in Haiku
46 reads

৻৲ . . . . . . . . . . . .

Crisp leaves fall bookmarked

retracing the paths of old

Autumnal descent

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Cover image for post Phased or Unphased, by Last
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Last in Poetry & Free Verse
37 reads

Phased or Unphased

We'll blame the moon for the holding

on, to the waning, that makes our gaunt

shadows fill with all of lassitude...

Till we cower together in the dark

of the new...

howl, to never own the lune, a stake

I'd claim, and it will possess you, too

waxing highlights on our cheeks, manic

with a shine, each time it passes us by

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Challenge
Haiku of Fearlessness
Haiku: Write a haiku that depicts the idea of fearlessness.
Cover image for post ●, by Last
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Last in Haiku
33 reads

●

As hara-kiri......

In the belly of defeat;

The well to Spring free...

❁ ✿ ❁ ✿ ❁ ✿ ❁ ✿

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Challenge
h2o
(: a micro poem about water form of your choice :)
Cover image for post The Drop, by Last
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Last in Micropoetry
60 reads

The Drop

I heard it.

Dew, from the tip of a needle, leaf...

A whistle down, as I inhale the green

of your sighs, squeezed so elementally

condensed and reassembled, a piece of sky

feeding the stand of all our Originality.

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Last in Journal
104 reads

Dear Friends,

I am posting a short personal note to let you know that I have not been able to respond as I usually do to each post into my challenge prompts. I greatly regret this and want to apologize and reassure you that I read each post and appreciate your work fully. I am battling some pain at the moment and have every intent to return to writing. I will mark a heart and repost, so you know I have read your work and have every intent of resuming writing comments soon.

I will likely continue to post prompts, and again ask for this understanding for a little while longer.

Please know that your writings inspire and motivate me. I even had a dream based on one of the responses posted recently in the Comedy portal, and I rarely ever dream.

Thank you! and please take good care of yourselves :)

*p.s. I will delete this post in time, once things normalize.

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