

Self destruct
Today’s cocktail of chemicals and apathy
brought me to skinned knees and compressed headaches
with today’s lost marbles
rolling all over the shop
but the will to suffer morning’s snarling bully
is fodder enough for me to wake up with a determined pulse
driven by an insatiable appetite to not self destruct
and I will clamp down upon your ignorant notions
that I try to bury in pharmaceutical haze
Old Man’s Last Day On Earth
“I think I’ll retire now”
Said the atrophied old man
His ancient voice all husked grain and shattered glass
As those telltale words
Crept from his mouth’s gossamer canyon
For he was at war with time’s decimating beasts
Whose phantom jaws dug violent fires
Beneath his wizened flesh sheets
All fare for grief’s conquering fathoms
Skinned soul deep
And so he collected his dust blanketed books
And bandaged his groaning fingers
Exhausted from the year’s tombstone pace
Kept awake each night by his coffin dry coughs
Which rattled like bloody thunder
Leaking from each black balloon lung
Ready to pop
For the buzzards
Under stained glass stars
Like hungry sparks peeking behind sullen nights
Thus decided he that this year was a draw
In that it bloodied his fists
But still taught him to crawl
And he was pleased with such bruised sentiment
And stepped bent but forward towards bald funeral sky
Drinking long the last few drops
Of sinking lemon sun
His bronzed goblet now retired
For he had outrun the devil
With final leathery foot steps
Tattooing sacred victories onto unleavened ground
That even a universe of horned tragedies couldn’t erase
So his last day on earth was one hell of a party
And now he was home.
To Know Love
Cogito
in my left ventricle
I built up a little
alter...
Ergo,
it said in Latin
upon it
love will lie here
for slaughter
It will be sacrificed
and if not forgiven
all will surely be forgotten
I will keep it
in this cage
Beating
and it will
serve me
right,
in Sum...
And escaping
wax winged lit
in hopeful prayer
the likeness of god
will tumble
To its chamber, back
where I think I am
its keeper
and it, the
worshiper
2024 SEP 08
Peanut Butter and Jealousy: 1 Lunchables 13, 1-16
"For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14).
"Some psychiatrists say that people who eat peanut butter sandwiches are lonely...I guess they're right. And when you're really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth." (Clark Gesner, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown)
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have peanut butter, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have jelly, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not trade my lunch, I gain nothing.
4 God is love, but love is jelly. God is omnipotent, but peanut butter is all-sticking.
5 Love is sticky, and it sticks to the roof of your mouth and remains long past the digestion of the jelly.
6 Protein and sugars are the nutrition of love.
7 Love does not delight in tartness but rejoices with the pasty reminders hours later from your teeth. It always sticks, always sweetens, always comes in brown paper bags, and always perseveres as fair barter at lunchtime.
8 Love never fails. But the prophecies they will cease; where the tongues smack and cannot be unstuck; where there is knowledge good and evil, and these are PBJ and broccoli, respectively. Verily, vegetables will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the alchemy of peanuts and grapes come together, the separateness of them disappears.
11 When I was a child, I ate like a child, I tasted like a child, I digested like a child. When I became a man, I couldn't put the ways of childhood behind me.
12 Yet, now we must watch our waistlines. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: proteins, fats, and starches. But the greatest of these is the love for the sticky and the sweet.
14 And fear not! For there is Jardiance.
15 And the Lord saw that it was good.
16 Like peanut butter and jealousy.
The places you will go, when you’re left all alone
My heart performs a tune so few may hear,
A quiet violin whispering passionately in the ear.
The trees sing along but even they are distant,
Myself, alone, the only thing that’s consistent.
The piano keys quicken, giving way to the night,
As the stars lay dying, falling from light,
and darkness beckons me forward in fright.
The harp strikes harshly showing all that’s infected,
Harmonizing a tune of what’s self-neglected,
Myself, the cause for what self-abandoning affected.
As the silence falls, encapsulating my soul,
I collapse under the weight of my own black hole.
I try to see the shadows that make me whole,
But with each thump of the bass, my demons rush forward.
Left all alone, panicked, and cornered,
Myself, exposing how I feel tortured.
Deeper I dig into an eternal abyss,
Listening for the lessons of all that‘s amiss.
The symphony mellows, the thundering dismissed.
Myself, the conductor, of all I remiss.
With each epiphany that I unearth,
Alone is the place I learn my worth,
Accept myself, and with it rebirth.
Finished Canvas
Maybe when you find someone else to fall in your arms
my heart will sink, a stone in a bottomless sea.
I know you'll be happy with anyone else but me.
Because I was never your missing piece
just played a part of the brushstrokes hand
like a violin that created our children beautifully.
Hazy Shade of Winter, Less Than Zero, pills, sheet walls, redaction, and deciding to live.
From a hit by The Bangles, to the bloody and '80s adulating reach of American Psycho, episode number 38 starts and ends with more bangs than a West Texas brothel in the 1800s. Seven writers from the site complete the landscape here, with a lead by area_man, and wrapped nicely with thePearl and Mariah, so you know the new blood between them holds its mud.
Here's the link to the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsEjqj8g6s
And here are the pieces featured on Prose. Radio.
https://www.theprose.com/post/816235/when-the-zoloft-hits https://www.theprose.com/post/816024/searching https://www.theprose.com/post/816017/they-call-her-fickle
https://www.theprose.com/post/816230/the-day-i-decided-to-live https://www.theprose.com/post/816225/if https://www.theprose.com/post/816122/i-redact-my-forgiveness
https://www.theprose.com/post/816108/perceived
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team