Early Morning: A Prose Poem

Saturday Poetry Prompt: what happens in the early hours?

Awful green and purple light as we walk past Oxford’s Gentlemen’s Club — me and my too-shallow breaths, unable to really descend to any feeling — but we’re covering it up with smoke and darkness, venturing out to The Albert, taking in noise that I don’t understand — can’t hear any of the lyrics…

Out with the early morning deaths, feeling like a stepped-on cigarette end now, the shaking begins, so I press myself closer to your warmth.

But you step away. Or I pushed…it could be that too. It’s the middle of the week, and I’ve got nothing to write. All my thinking turned towards this avoidance, crushing the past with swollen eyelids, but I wasn’t really awake. I’m seeing two or three of you now, like looking at a light bulb with an aura.

Clearing the vision. What vision? That time I went on my knees and the time after that and after…I couldn’t find it in me, didn’t know how to react. I was running all that time.

The shadows of buildings are cast in piano-key lines on the sidewalk— we’re stepping on the sharps, leaving the white keys to fend for themselves —

Early mornings are taunts, are whispers, are fucking sadists.

J.D. Harms 2021

Prompt:

For some people, getting up in the morning is pretty much a non-starter. For others, staying up till the sun gets up isn’t really an issue. But there’s something special about those early morning hours, something that changes in the air. What do the wee hours of the day mean to you? Whatever style of poem you want to write, write it about/in the early morning, what happens, what do you feel, what do you do…remember to tag me in it! Read on, rock on!!!

In case you missed Wednesday’s Prose Poem, check it out here:

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