20 January 2021 Wednesday Prose Poem Prompt: what you don’t do well
Fractured
A Prose Poem
Now they cry with the melodies of my rhyme and song yearn my roof but bleeding away the sheet of thong I've seen the worst of the worst now, but now that you’re here maybe the shadows have more pockets to fill
My feet scrape the curb, polished like your pistol but rugged like the bullet dragged past the auburn tongue into the throat lodged into the place like my skin on the stove-top made from tar That you so very souvenir in the closet of deafened sin
Finally, I am able to see the grass only they’ve wilted together with the emptied branch, breaking my glow sticks from the thud I hang out open, limp limbs are agape doors; directional arrows I cry but nothing solid comes out
Now that the ash and smoke find their way into the tissue You count down the pre-ordered retirement that I never reserved still gleefully sipping on that fucking expired corona beer My friend is dead. my friend is dead.
gather my thoughts, only I get the blame as I watch you suddenly shift with my reverie, force my opaque nail into the head, my hair stands on its bare feet It all goes numb with your boot pressed on my aching arch
The lock of my skin is your key and now you’ve added the laughing emoji You won't understand how much you’ve folded me underneath the creases but you will when I regurgitate back my organ and throw my leg Pierce you through like a bullet to the chest, amongst their separated ribs
but as long as you’ve gathered the flock of ravens, prayers don't reach the cloud, the hand towards the uncertain G(g)od, then it all becomes black — lack of light, not the color I will remember the toy car and the doll, your stupid face and how it turned playtime into nightmares that I keep waking up from
When the only time Nature relents, you’ve to shove it back in drought resounding words in the broken brain My hands to the sky, making dilapidated constellations Of stars that you pushed far away Away from Mother and the river
I sit here again Latched in your arms by the carved markings labeling the survivors when you were looking at the wrong places Walking away with her flesh residing in your frightened chest
your helmet falls to the ground, I feel your blood, my blood against the skin. Melted wax, candle, and your moist uniform stained with the stench of your paint. Suddenly the scream comes, only now should I feel obliged to eternal helplessness, fractured beyond the comprehension of bone But it's only now when I realize the smoke takes the form of my scream
The teddy bear falls short of the brown coloring, sits by the candy cane left abandoned in the abandoned, owners that won’t come back, and pillows I won't hug anymore. Tears in my eyes raise their volume so that my blocked ear can understand that the things I couldn't do well did not count if I wasn't even able to do them.
my lips fall apart, the final analysis of the last breath, concluding allotted span, finally learning from Mother how the Green and Rifle takes away the life. Alas, the world in momentary pause, prolonging the duration of my barbie life cut short by their knife, but now that they’ve gone, it should be my turn soon.
Daniel A. Teo 2021
Author’s Narration: This is truly one of my more raw and straight-from-the-shoulder prose that shines a light on a girl’s episode with war and its aftermath that renders her inability to act. It is through this mentioning of fractured inaptitude can I fully express the sufferings from The Terror Of War — a famous photograph captured by Nick Ut.
My apologies to J.D. Harms for ruining his fun prompt.