your touch comes

and goes

in seconds

always leaving me

cold and wanting

more.

Oh, dove of peace, amidst the chaos, a silent plea,

In your beak, an olive branch held tight,

a symbol of unity, in the world's plight,

soar above, oh bird of serene grace,

spread your message to every space,

with each feather's stroke, erase the hate

and sing the anthem of unity

For peace on Earth, as vast as the sky.

Where whispers of war are lost in the wind,

And the symphony of harmony is unpinned.

As nations embrace in a tranquil trance.

So let us join hands, hearts entwined,

In pursuit of the peace we seek to find.

For Earth is our haven, our home so dear,

May peace be our anthem,

Is the birdcage a curse? Or is it fate that the cage seller found it? Did it give it’s right to the other birds to fly in the sky? Does the bird rebel against the bars of its cage or against the life that created the cage? Does it spend its days imprisoned, humiliated, while other birds enjoy their freedom in the sky? Doesn't it have the right to that sky? Were wings not given to it to soar outside the cage? By God, then what does that bird do between the bars of the cage? It sits all day, all night, in front of those iron bars, pondering its fate. Is it a curse, fate, or an involuntary sacrifice? It finds no answer, and how can it find the answer when it’s nothing but the bearer of the question? And here we are, in a cage like a bird behind its bars…

Episode sweet sixteen rings in with a beat of Billy Idol, into a stream of consciousness wake, led by a man of duality, and topped off with a poem by one of the ever-shining stars in our night sky...

Beccawaits and BIGT round off the video with style and loving grace.

Here's the lnk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aadNTBBb54M&t=84s

And here are the pieces.

https://www.theprose.com/post/807496/...

https://www.theprose.com/post/805779/...

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

What do Walt Whitman, Danzig, Jim Morrison, Elvis, a shit job, and existentialism have in common? Episode 15 of Liquid Velvet Literature on Prose. Radio, that's what. Two writers follow W.W. to bring it home with words jumping alive with fire and life, and a touch of death.

Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ZY-9k0ZKg&t=121s

And here are the pieces featured.

https://www.theprose.com/post/807692/at-the-end-of-time-alexis-karpouzos https://www.theprose.com/post/807771/a-caged-bird

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

I know that our efforts all come to nothing. Analyze life, tear its trappings off, lay it bare with thought, with logic, with philosophy, and its emptiness is revealed as a bottomless pit; its nothingness frankly confesses to nothingness, and Despair comes to perch in the soulI know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing — and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork and all our ideas will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. I know, No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. I know the time — eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects — offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation. So, my dignity is broken and weak, in recognition of my impending defeat.

The man who is alone, who stands on his own feet, who is stripped bare, who asks for nothing and wants nothing, who has reached the apex of disinterested­ness not through blind renunciation but through ex­cess of clear vision, turns to the world which stretches out before him as a burned prairie, as a devastated city — a world in which no churches, asylums, refuges, ideals, are left — and says: «Though you promise me nothing I am still with you, I am still an atom of your energies, my work is part of your work; I am your companion and your mirror as you march on your merciless way. But I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to freedom alone.