False Prophets (Language)

[dwells]

Wishing this never ended V and I think that station wagon was a 63 Chevy maybe, going by the color. Two people sent in different directions yet with a common need and in the end united by a common cause (or perhaps the enemy of inevitable responsibility) and the hanging question maybe, asking if that was enough? The Atlantic / Pacific coasts stanza was particularly poignant, cheers for this one!

[karrie]

I was pulled into this with the first line and from beginning to end I was hooked! Much enjoyed reading!

[amaranthus]

Like the others, I was pulled into this with the first line. A very Well spun tale from the start. Congrats on the spotlight!

[potentialpoet]

I used to live in Venice, CA in a house that backed up to Electric Avenue. Had a sometimes girlfriend who lived on Electric Ave. Never scored weed on Electric Ave. I have been in long distance relationships, only one endures.

Your poem is enigmatic to me. My feeling is that it is about a loss of idealism, about coming down to earth, about the limits we face at every turn, especially in how well you can really know another person. And we have limits on how much we can give of ourselves to another.

I like the easy rhythm of the poem. It reads like a lament or meditation.

[dornicks]

An interesting tale well told. A good all-round read that I found quite captivating. Congratulations on the Spotlight,

dornicks

[JASON]

nonconformity and the search for freedom...
I understand the false prophets as hypocrites who would judge you
and break you down?
congratulations on your independent stance - spotlight for sure!

[A.k.ChaosDream]

Impressed by the unique trail of thought this had and equally by maintaining my attention to quite a long read for my low-ish span. Perfection is created out of need, of lust maybe, but can you take less ?
Again, I'm impressed

[Wynmaiden]

This was... spellbinding. I usually can stick with a long poem fairly well, and like others have said, I didn't want it to end. Your word-use and the way you bind lines and ideas together is masterful. A well-deserved Spotlight.

[jsol]

You told me this story in just such a way that I was living it myself. You truly, seamlessly connected your personal tale with the tale that at birth everyone is granted a leading role in and each day inhales and exhales with fresh lungs, though fresh in this context rarely means brand new but the simpler endowment of a beginning, the raising of a curtain, the revealing of a stage. Though the entire audience is not passively shadowed in the dark aisles of identity-less seats, but watching your play (though most are too busy starring in theirs to watch much else) from a stage of their own, beginning each day with only a vague outline, cycling the necessities of their bodies with the fresh organs of limitless possibility and the untrammeled hope of a curtain hoisted amidst the bright lights and the merry knowledge that echoes in the footfall of the first step in a direction bursting with the boundless freedom of a path that hasn't yet had the chance to reveal the cunning ways it will hold the treasures you seek just out of reach or split with a sign-less jest in which your choice, in gental curves of deception, will suddenly make a tragedy of this story that began in a sunrise of joyful discoveries twirling wishfully in imagination's hungry eye. Now lost in a harsh land on a trail that mere miles ago was wide and followed a clear brook but now ends at a thick, foreboding forest of dark and grotesquely bent trees surrounded by cliffs of rock that in the descending sun shone like golden walls that would give such enormous wealth that all the days could be spent sitting with wine in hand and lovers nestled in your lap. Night is falling and the curtain descends with your eyelids. But just before the curtain reaches the stage you look about at your audience of fellow actors and notice they too are often frustrated, dissapointed, lost and almost always still searching for that thing they've decided they need. So many variations of the same story. This poem let's me live your feelings. You wrote the script to an act or two and made your story into the art that flows like a fountain from the emotive abundance of this incredibly unique and amazing situation in which we find ourselves from day to day. You captured the fountain's cascade with a vessel of words. That is tricky as words have far more spaces for the juice to drain out like a glass with a hole in the bottom. But when fashioned just right they hold the fountain's decadence better than any other creation I know of. Anyway, I like to write when I am inspired and I am happy that this joyful discovery came so early on the path I will walk today. May what you find be that which you seek and may that which you seek, once found, be shared with all who care to know and all who need to be nourished. ~<*>~

[MikelFirewalker]

Did you exist before I knew you?
I don’t mean to sound dismissive or
to invalidate experience
I just imagine your headless ghost
scoring weed from strangers
on electric avenue
tossing around in your chariot
a sun-stained-green station wagon
with a mattress in the back
plastered with badges of activism
and cigarette burns
unafraid while
dreaming of me
someone like me
perhaps something entirely new
to intercept the fever dreams
and appear when you opened your eyes
like a spirit
coaxed from the void

Making a one-way trip across the country
burning bridges behind you
gasoline fumes and dial tones
As I stood stationary on the
atlantic coastline
telepathically pleading for
a safe return
That you’d wash up again
with your bronze, salt-kissed skin
the pacific smell
brought back to me in waves
nostalgia for a place not seen
and a life not fully lived

I could have drowned in the bathtub
Drunk on whiskey, hubris, and
my own indecency
Before we ever touched each other
In our salad days of hedonism
before we came back home
to sober ourselves
and drive nails into our palms
in protest of false prophets
that claimed to know us by name
and called out to us in the night
laid prostrate on the altar
yet disobedient and proud

We watched them turn to snakes
wrapped innocuously around our throats
tightening imperceptibly
until we gasped

But didn’t we lay them to waste?
We’re not without the damage
but didn’t we burn them to the f------
blackened floorboards
just to walk together now?

Or did we just survive?

this poem is f.....' gorgeous...[I guess that's how folks here spell that sacred word?]

it feels real real, real alive, and appropriately p--- off about what that means in the here-and-now of today, and also about all that our aliveness inevitably comes down to, which is the fact that we, the uber sane, cannot remain...


michael