when i close my eyes, i see the gates of heaven and hell swinging lazily under a warm sun. saint peter’s sipping his first glass of wine in a couple thousand years. heaven is empty, and the afterlife is over. on earth, everyone who ever lived and loved and died is back home, treading lightly, as though they’re still used to walking on clouds and over burning coals.
nobody is tired and everyone is free. there’s no difference anymore between death and life, between the old and the young. time snapped like an elastic stretched too far when death and senescence vanished, and experience is as good as innocence; everyone knows exactly the things they need to know to live the way they always wanted to and never could. wrinkled old men with origami smiles, who wasted the best years of their lives on warfields, and in combat zones, and in the barracks of inconsequence, are running and leaping and shouting like madmen. they may even be mad. so might we all.
my hands have lost the way of tearing down and razing. my tongue has no poison, no fatal sting. i’m defanged, graceless, repaired. i’m lying in the grass of an open field, breathing and seeing and feeling, with nowhere to be but wherever i want. i don’t know where i’ll be when the sun dies, when the world is frozen forever. when We End. possibly i’ll still be right here.
god and the devil finally tired of the old ultra-violence, of the bitterness and loss, of even giving a damn. they gave it all up. for they so loved the world that they gave their only power, their only distinction, their only obsession. endless war, it turns out, is exhausting, and futile, and loveless.
last anyone heard, god was in a record store in times square, his eyes closed, his brow at last eased, tapping his foot to original vinyl bob seger. the devil was in the arctic, cooling off. of course, that was a while ago, and no one’s keeping tabs. they could be anywhere by now.
Author notes
This was written in July of this year.
Comments
1 - 5 of 5
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I'm sitting here trying to pick out parts that had flaws. That is impossible seeing as this is gramitcally perfect and you covered the nitty gritty bases
Then I tried to find a part that I didn't like. That was even harder. Very insightful, and nicely penned.
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Haha, I am proud of myself for reading this. I don't really like prose - I find it's for people who need 47948278482764 words to say what a decent poet can say in a few lines.
Shhhh, don't tell anyone I said that 
I'll be burnt at the stake 
Anyway, I enjoyed these ponderings of yours. How wise you are for someone your age. What I liked about this is that it was not crammed full of adjectives and description like a lot of prose. I don't need shiz spelt out for me, you know? I just like for a poet to put my mind on the same wave length as theirs and allow me to feel what they feel. Misson accomplished here!
running and leaping and shouting like madmen. they may even be mad. so might we all.Well well well, I'll drink to that
The last "stanza" kicks much arse.
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Well aren't you such a trooper for reading, then
I guess this isn't really a prose poem so much as just prose, but it's not a short story or a novella or whatever, so I didn't know what else to call it, haha.
Thanks very much Allyce - obviously my writing has much improved since this (or, I mean, so I believe) but I'm glad it still got the job done for you. I'll drink to that line as well... in 2 years, when I can drink to anything
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What a weird world it would be, but then in a way sad, and a boring. No more exuses, guilt, sorrow, dreams, and poetry would become a rather dull affair. lol.
Nevermind the lack of breathing space...
But I really like this, makes you think if anything goes, there'd be nothing left.
I like your thoughts.
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Haha, it would be a little crowded I really like the way you put it - "if anything goes there'd be nothing left". I had never looked at this write like that
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