Togetherness for the Whole
Sunny finally stops, "Ok, we'll rest here for the night," immediately followed by three heavy sighs of relief. "April, find water. Amber, start a fire. Eira... find us some dinner."
As Amber and April were about to shuffle off, Eira, visibly weak, drops to the earth, close to death as you can get from exhaustion. "I can't move another step, we've been walking all day."
"Eira, we're all in this together, we each need to do our part. The longer you sit, the harder it will be to get back up. We will be OK." Sunny's deep blue eyes gazed just as deeply into her soul. While fiercely intimidating, they would instill confidence in even the most unmotivated individual. But Eira is more stubborn than most.
"What's the point... nothing survives in the end anyway," she mutters, unsurprisingly woeful.
"Why do you always have to be the pessimist, Eira? You know Sunny hates it." April retaliates, defending her older sister.
"She's right, you know." Amber says as she picks up a piece of wood off the ground, "and for the record, I'm not being pessimistic."
"What do you call it then? Sure doesn't sound optimistic."
"It's called being realistic," she calmly replies, pulling out her pocket knife.
April must've never heard this word before, because she fails to respond and then looks towards Sunny for help.
Sunny rolls her eyes, "ok, Ms. Realist, how do you realistically propose we save mom?"
Amber had already started whittling the piece of wood she found. She remained silent for a few moments, then slowly looks up at Sunny, and dodges the question. "I thought you were the leader... what's your plan?"
Unaffected, Sunny beams with confidence, "by working together. Which reminds me, can you please start the fire?"
With a glare from her sage green eyes, Amber turns around and disappears into the dark, mumbling to herself, "yeah, yeah... that's not even a very specific plan..." Amber knows she is more the type of person to take someone else's ideas and improve on them, rather than make a new plan from scratch. She saves that kind of creativity for her artwork.
Sunny reminds April to find water, and after some direction, she heads towards the sound of a creek. April really looks up to her older sisters. She wishes to be just like Sunny, and she looks up to Amber if only to know how to be the opposite. Blue eyes, but a lighter shade than Sunny's; curious, growing strong, and with plenty of life still to see.
Then there's Eira. Eyes so dark brown that they look black if not exposed to direct sunlight. She is the oldest, and arguably the wisest. She's experienced so much loss that her outlook on life has become extremely cold and bitter. One would think the influence of Sunny's bright soul would help, and maybe it does, but she doesn't show it.
She finally found the energy to look for food, and about 20 feet into the darkness, to her delight, stumbled upon a ripe raspberry bush, making her task quick and easy.
They can all finally relax around the warmth of the fire. With bellies somewhat full from the fruit, they stare blankly into the dancing orange flames. No energy to bicker anymore, the minute differences in pitches of the crackling wood acts as music to combat the silence.
Eira sits alone further away from the flames than the rest. Amber sits cross-legged hard at work whittling at a safe distance from the others. April and Sunny sit together, with April's head at rest on Sunny's shoulder. They know what comes tomorrow, but for now, enjoy this moment together.
Sunny begins to hum a tune in hopes of increasing the overall morale. She hopes to create a sense of peace before the looming storm on the horizon.
(note: this is in relation to Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter in the northern hemisphere, as I understand it would be the opposite for the southern half. I may pursue this to be a proper short story or even book. Thanks for reading!)
The Cheshire Cat With a Side of Pork and Beans
I've always felt that the world is more mad than broken. Although, I suppose there is probably a fair amount of brokenness required to achieve madness. So, it may just be that one cannot exist without the other. That is a matter way beyond my slightly irregular, shouldn't have made it past quality control, intellect to comprehend. As a result of having an IQ that is P-U, I tend to lean on the simplest definition of madness or insanity which is, "Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting to a achieve a different result." Of course, depending on the circumstances, this futility can definitely invite insanity's bedfellow, brokenness to the party. Though simplistic, I think this simple definition of insanity pretty much describes humanity from day one. Wars rarely solve anything, but we still fight them. Kindness is always more fruitful than cruelty, but there's still plenty of cruelty in humanity. Political systems continue to fail or outright abuse those they're supposed to protect, yet we still use the same systems, contenting ourselves with minor cosmetic modifications. It's like chosing a purple shaft today over the same tried and true green shaft our leaders have been shoving up our collective asses for centuries. Sure, it's different, but it doesn't change that fact that we're still getting a shaft. So, the difference is pretty irrelevant. In short, I think that the great sage of insanity, the Cheshire Cat put it best when he said, "We're all mad here." I guess the real question is, can a mad person navigate a mad world without being swallowed by the world's mass, twisted, often dangerous, cruel, and narcissistic madness? Consequently, are we doomed to share society's collective delusion of grandeur that allows each of us to somehow assume that we're modern day Napolean Bonaparts while simultaneously believing that we're also genius artists who work solely in the medium of feces using the walls of our padded cells as our canvas? Can we have our own madness that is unique to us, an insanity that separates the individual from the rest of the rabid lunatics in the world at large? I'd like to think so.
Personally, I try to mold my delusions into something benign or if not benign, then only harmful to myself. For example, I write. My writing is unrefined, often without purpose, and is more manic than a tweaker with a set of tools and a broken lawnmower. Plus, there's a good chance that the Oscar Myer hotdog jingle will show up at random times somewhere within the pork and beans of my prose, but it's my writing and it harmlessly gives my delusions a little playtime. However, for the more timid reader who possesses a little dignity and sense of decorum, reading anything I write provides a mild psychological shock similar to what one experiences when pissing on a live electric fence. The lesson is learned immediately after the electricity climbs the conductive arc of urine and lights up the individual's mommy or daddy parts. So, after a good zap of my writing and a couple of melted fillings, odds are, the timid reader won't be doing that again. With this newfound wisdom born of a very negative experience, the timid reader knows better and the next time they'll take a pass on readng an post by Shallowgenepool.
Professionally, I have sculpted the dry humping a fire hydrant level of crazyness that is a regular part of my job into a bit of cathartic delusion. For example, when the office is intolerably quiet, the voices in my head become bored which leads to psychotic naughtiness. This isn't a good thing because engaging in my brand of psychotic naughtiness will likely lead to unemployment and a criminal court date. Seeking to alleviate this very dangerous boredom, it's not unusual for my coworkers in the neighboring cubicles to hear me suddenly break out in, "YOU MAKE ME FEEL...YES, YOU MAKE ME FEEL, YOU...MAKE...ME...FEEL...LIKE...A...NATURAL.......WOOOOOMAAAAN" in my singing voice that can best be described as a tone-deaf, pubescent, prone to cracking, and dolphin with hemorrhoids-like, falsetto. I don't care that I'm an almost 50 year old man. It's my delusion and Aretha Franklin was a goddess, I really don't care what my coworkers think. They can either move to a different floor or they can sing backup, I'm good with both choices. Singing spontaneous Motown melodies at the top of my nails on a chalkboard voice allows me to get through the fucking day without trying to silence the voices in my head by cracking my own skull wide open with a three hole punch!
At home, my lunacy is diffused by reading. My reading is as manic as my writing. One week I'll read Steinbeck, Twain, Orwell, or Shakespeare, the next week I'll read a totally predictable zombie, werewolf, or vampire novel (and no, the Twilight Series doesn't qualify, even at my worst I have better standards than that). There's no reason to my choice. It's as spontaneous as a fifteen year old boy cumming within two seconds of being invited to touch a girl, "There" for the first time. One week I may choose to read a work of great beauty and wisdom and the next week I'll be reading the literary equivalent of left over Taco Bell that's been in the refrigerator for three months. Of course, my manically driven choice of reading material is a bit embarrassing at times, but in the end, it hurts no one.
Music hath charms that soothe the savage beast. It's true or in my case, I try to rock the voices in my head to sleep, or when that doesn't work, to drown them out entirely. For example, on my commute home from work, I will snarl along with Dave Mustaine and "Tornado of Souls," celebrate debachery with the Rolling Stones belting out, "She's so cold," or shiek to Valhalla with Led Zeppelin's, "Immigrant Song." Some people shoot heroin. Some people drink. Some people pray. Some people dress up like a 19th century German school boy and get spanked by a 300 pound woman dressed like a Swedish milk maid. Me, I worship at the feet of the rock gods and goddesses.The end result is that I make it home without entering a psychotic rage resulting in me taking a tire iron to the driver of the motherfucking Tesla that is apparently saving battery charge by NOT USING HIS FUCKING BLINKER!
Well, there is no escaping madness. We really are all mad here. The difference is we can MY BOLONEY HAS A FIRST NAME IS O-S-C-A-R, MY BOLONEY HAS A SECOND NAME, IT'S M-A-Y-E-R and join the often harmful insanity of society or we can shape our own madness like sculpting mashed potatoes into a scale model of Mount Rushmore. Being crazy may be inescapable, but being a crazy dick, that's a choice. Ha! I bet you were thinking I'd add the Oscar Mayer hotdog jingle in here somewhere!
A little black dot, balance, decaying leaves, morning dew, and infinite jest.
There's a little black dot on the Sun today... it's the same old thing as yesterday... except for the writers featured on the show. Nothing yesterday about them, until tomorrow, but who puts a timer on art, anyway? In episode 30 on Prose. Radio, the words roll smoothly with the likes of Mariah, area_man, LARGE, The Villaires, and the man of area once more, who closes the show with the complexity of family.
Here's the link to the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYvrATECLOQ
And here are the pieces featured.
ttps://www.theprose.com/post/814482/a-violence-unfamiliar-to-most https://www.theprose.com/post/814486/balancing-the-bar https://www.theprose.com/post/814424
https://www.theprose.com/post/814475/first-words-of-day-in-the-morning-dew https://www.theprose.com/post/814476/infinite-jest
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
First Words of Day, in the Morning Dew
Poets.
Where others are tortured
by sleeplessness
We turn torment into art form
And lay into it tooth and nail
With all the entrails
Hanging loose
So juices spill, rolling down
The crevasse...
Blotted up from the chin
onto a diner serviette and
repressed in print...
The pain still fresh expressed
like from a grinding mill
where sand is powdered
into dream...
Sweet is our profession
With the only hand on the call
Box being as transparent as a
Vesper
As it hovers over a heart
In the breaking darkness of dawn
When it has just freshly been Forgiven...
Languid in our vision, as cool
And calm as palm fronds
Swaying as the
Breeze exudes
The breath,
The word becoming new life
As dead sheets are turned...
And the corners are tucked
5/4/24
Bunny Villaire
& Mavia Villaire
Infinite Jest
My sister is educated
She’s a college professor
A bona fide feminist
She teaches people
Who don’t know
What toilet to use
How to shit all over
Other people’s lives
It’s been a while
Since we’ve talked
She tells me
That I’m a real writer
Which makes me sad
That I’m such an asshole
About her passion
And that she
Cannot see
That she’s one too
David Burdett
5/4/2024
Fade Away
Eyes green, hair blonde, skintight and makeup on,
Wild, free, still naive, never going to happen to me,
Drunken nights, unsure, endless fights, insecure,
Dark days, hidden face, out of place and in a haze,
Endless nights, numbing pain, there's nothing left to say,
Eyes gray, fade away, hair thin, thin skin,
Despondent and caged, life blurs, quickly aged,
Puncture.