the black stuff

skirts the plump bustled bar

as growing rush of ambient noise

climbs

to deafening silence

where blood is bitumen flushed

to drowning brain

sticky tainted

stoutly stained

reminiscent of signs of legend

that fused this

infusion

No Blacks No Irish

No dogs

he sits there eyes glazed

leaning against the wild wind

anchored by deep

deep

deep

Irish route he once read

peat boggy repeated

belch

at its deepest

bled inside a strong dark pint

the black earth

awaits a settling head

as semen coloured bubbles coat

his innerspace

cloud

his storm

fecund

not of these shores

he is

not of these shores

No Blacks No Irish

No dogs

he mourns

the passing of the peaceful dark

with every taste

spits a spark

the pen goes down

to free his hand

and with every taste

he frees his hand

for testimony

the truth

the whole truth

and nothing but the truth

ink now runs

as free and black

as dying molten glass

down his convulsing throat

past freezing shoulder

to frozen heart

which will no longer hear his words

over silent dark

No Blacks No Irish

No dogs

to pen this

envy

a start

to suicide note

cadence of ghost

and a melody

listening to fluid reason

waiting

for a head to settle

welcome

to the craic whore

the opening door calls

fiddled fine fettle

we are immigrants all

Rick Dove (c) 2016

#stpatricksday

I feel like there should be a certain purity to art. You should write because you love it, not because you’re trying to be the next big thing. It shouldn’t be tainted with capitalistic intentions.

I don't know where this belief came from, and I don't think I'm right.

What’s wrong with trying to be the next big thing? What's wrong with using the NY Times Best Seller List as a measure of your success, as your certificate of accomplishment? What’s wrong with wanting to create, but not starve? Why do I always picture a “true” creative being a starving artist?

I’m not trying to be huge. I’ve realized that I don’t write only for myself; I write to get positive feedback from others. My self-esteem is at an all-time low, and I have been working years in a job that rarely praises me.

It makes me cringe to write that. Call the fuckin whaaambulance, “My job doesn’t praise me”. Boo-fuckin-who, you whiny little shit. I have a job and can do grown up things, like keep a roof over my head and buy food without being financially devastated. But it does help my morale if my good work is recognized. I can’t keep denying that positive feedback makes me feel good.

Why does it feel bad to feel good?

We expect to train dogs with positive reinforcement. We want to raise our kids with positive reinforcement. Where did I get the idea that wanting positive reinforcement as an adult makes me weak, needy, and clingy? Who forced this narrative down my throat that we should be happy to work hard, no matter what we get in return for it?

I write because I’ve been assuming that I needed a creative outlet. Is it really the creativity I need, or the positivity that Prose feeds me?

I want to believe I can do what I love and not worry about receiving anything in return. I want to believe in this statement that has leeched itself to my brain: Working hard is always its own reward.

Here is what’s annoying: even if people throw compliments at me, I feel uncomfortable for enjoying it. I feel guilty.

I always feel guilty! Is it residual Catholic guilt? Were my parents too hard on me? Am I holding myself to unrealistic standards? I think the majority of the time I enjoy something, I feel guilty for enjoying it. How fuckin stupid is that?

What makes a writer? I’m so fuckin stuck in my head that it’s been harder than usual to write. I was reading some of my older work and I feel like I’ve lost something. There is something extra that used to sit in my writings that have abandoned me. Or I’ve lost it. Or maybe I was afraid of enjoying it, so I’ve pushed it back into my subconscious.

Just write, I tell myself. Fuck the questions and the guilt, just write.

But when I try to write, I hate what comes out. I hate it.If I don’t have this, what do I have?

This isn’t a fishing lure for compliments or tears. I need to know that other writers agonize over things, overthink things that end up being completely irrelevant. Then, I need to know how you come back out of it to keep kicking ass.

Not everything that sits

Marinating in my belly

Is worthy of poetry;

But I need to write it

And it needs to be

Beautiful.

If you keep wanting them, we’ll keep posting them. We’re getting fantastic feedback from lots of you about these spotlight sessions, and have some great answers to our questions lined up from Prosers old and new. By ‘old’, of course we mean in time served posting to Prose, NEVER in age!

This week we speak to a true hard hitter, regular poster, supporter and commenter; he himself says of you lovely Prosers “I feel like an elder statesman here, an older brother or dad or grand-fuckin’pa watching over my kids and beaming with pride at your growth and achievements.”

Yes indeed, it's the one, the only: Terry Trueman. Strap yourselves in Prosers, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Otherwise known as Terry Earl Trueman on some of his first publications circa 1969-1970, Terry lives in two homes; one in Spokane WA, (March to end of Oct) and the other in Tucson AZ (Nov to end of Feb). He fills us in on the rest: “My Prose name is T_E_Trueman which I selected because Terry Trueman is the name on my young adult/kids publications and I knew on Prose I’d be going beyond and above that level, content and language-wise.”

We ask him to tell those who don’t know him what his occupation is. He tells us: “I’m a full time author/poet/writer, mostly retired from speaking and public readings/presentations, after over a thousand such events from the last 16 years or so.”

Prose asks what his relationship is with writing and how it has evolved. Terry responds: “Next to my relationships with my wife Patti, son Jesse, dog Rusty and a few close loved ones, writing is the most important thing in my life. It evolved out of being the thing I did best, using words to woo women and make people laugh and like me and giving vicious nicknames to kids I didn’t like much. I got praised for writing early and often enough to make it my focus and to place all my hopes & dreams for amounting to something in life into it." 

"Then after a lifetime of trying, at age 52 my first novel got published, went platinum and made me rich and a bit famous. In other words I got VERY fuckin’ lucky.”

We probe him on what about his personal and professional life, namely what value does reading adds. His reply: “I’ve always been a reader but as a kid it was all comics and Mad magazine. I move my lips when I read, am very slow, but I can’t imagine NOT reading. I like so much of what I see younger writers doing on Prose and find much of it either just plain good, or at least very promising. And I’m not saying that just to suck-up. Mostly, at my age I don’t give a fuck what people think of me anyway. There’s some good writing happening here.”

We all want to know what he’s up to now and in the future. He happily informs us: “More of what I’ve been doing, poems in the here and now with some flashback shit probably, but mostly the state of my life/consciousness/experiences now. My wife calls what I write and the way I write “Blogetry”, which I think it pretty accurate. I’ll have a 2nd volume of Selected Poems coming out this Spring (working title, WHERE WE GOING WITH THIS?) My first vol came out last year, (WHERE’S THE FIRE?) I’m happy with both these books and I hope they attract an audience someday.”

Ever needy of assurances, Prose tugs on his sleeve and ask why he loves us so much: “I’ve already hit on this a bit. I love the young writers (and not-so-young ones) I’ve met here and trying to help them in their struggles to advance their craft. I like smart, pretty women who listen to me and treat me with kindness and appreciation. I love being able to post poems here and put links to them on Twitter so that I might be able to continue building audience and readers.”

Same question to him as to everyone: what book would he recommend everyone read before they die? His comeback: “Yep, STUCK IN NEUTRAL by…well…ME. Seriously, every human should read it; it’s fuckin’ awesome, just ask anyone who has ever read it.”

Prose asks if there is an unsung hero he would like to, well, sing about. There are more than one: “Quite a few actually, all my writing teachers, Kay Keyes, John Keeble, my friend poet Robert Sund. And I have a few loudly sung one’s too, Ken Kesey whom I had the honor to meet and visit with and listen to him talk about craft and life. And Bukowski, of course, my favorite writer/and especially poet.”

We ask him to describe himself in three words. Impossible: “Kind. Loving. Selfish. Generous. Formerly sexy. Smart. Inept. Recalcitrant. Atheistic. Sensual. Alcholic-lite. Anarcahistic. Socialist. Unwilling-to-obey-arbitrary rules like describing myself in three fuckin’ words.”

He gives us a quote that he feels epitomises him: “Yes there probably is…but I haven’t read it yet. Anyone who can be summed up in ‘one quote’ is a pretty simple motherfucker, which fits me to a tee, but, again, I don’t know that quote yet.”

Does he listen to music when he writes or reads?: “I rarely write/read to music. Mozart is the only one I can think of and that was back while writing STUCK IN NEUTRAL.”

The Prose Time Machine lands in that dreary and bookless dystopia once again. What does he say to them? Here’s what: "I don’t tell them shit! I ask “Where’s the nearest bar?” Same thing I’d say if there were books littering every inch of space. Actually yer describing a future I expect and am fine with (see below)”

Does he have a local Indie Bookstore he’d like to champion? “In Spokane, Aunties Bookstore is an institution but I feel books are dying, not writing, not stories, the power and importance of language, but the codex book, paper, ink, dead trees, fuck that—it’s all gonna be electric in the future…fine by me.”

We know he’s shy, so we force him to tell us anything else he’d like us to know. Here that is: “Not much really, most of my social media energy goes to Prose and @TTrueman on Twitter. I also publish some shit on @LitWeaverNews (that’s the Twitter handle, I think it’s Litweaver.com.) What more to know about me?”

“Nah, it’s all there in my work, the poems on Prose (I’ve posted close to 300 of them in the last couple years). I’ve been so much luckier than most. Like my editor at HarperCollins kids’ books said to me recently, “We had a hell of a run and a lot of people never get any run at all!” True words and I feel great gratitude for that truth. In the end, the work we leave behind us is all of ‘us’ that’s gonna be left and so we need to make it the best we can. I feel that I’m very fortunate to wake-up every day and hit it again, for the joy it brings me and, I hope, the bit of good it might do others.”

“Thanks for letting me carry-on. Like a friend once communicated by handing me a little packet of post-its with the quote, “But enough about me…whata you think of me?” Hey, maybe there’s that quote we were looking for earlier. LOL”

Thanks to Terry for that awesome, honest and funny interview. Get following him in the app where he is @T_E_Trueman or on Twitter as @TTrueman 

Get interacting, he’s one of what makes Prose what it is. If you are an active Proser or know one you'd like to hear more about, drop us a line at info@theprose.com

3rd November 2014

It was the next morning and Anabelle Glass still hadn’t returned home. Heston Chadwick knew this because the slam of her door hadn’t woken him up. That, and he had been making frequent trips to the fisheye lens fixed into his apartment door.

The corridor outside Heston’s apartment wasn’t something he particularly liked to look at. Its reddish rug, of which one could only slightly see from the looking glass, was fraying and dirtied from a thousand footsteps. Its walls were timelessly damaged – did they used to be cream? Grey? White? They were now mottled with age and misuse, edged with green mould, dirtied with fingerprints and layers and layers of picked-off wallpaper. The view from the looking glass had one redeeming feature, and that was the apartment door straight opposite Heston’s: The Home of Anabelle Glass.

It was closed more often than not, empty more often than not. In fact, Heston had never actually seen anyone but Anabelle Glass enter or leave her apartment – but when she did, he paid attention. What he knew of her apartment, what he knew of life beyond his own apartment and that small sliver of hallway, was recorded into one of Heston’s many notepads. This particular notepad was a teal one, decorated with small house martins and the long spindly branches they perched on. It was one of three house martin notebooks Heston owned and the only one which had been used as of yet. On its cover, Heston had penned:

Beyond Apartment 5a

And inside the booklet only a few pages had been used.

Heston wasn’t one for wasting ink or paper. Or thoughts. His apartment reflected that, with its mountains of old television magazines, boxes of cat litter for the cat he no longer had and empty mason jars. The mason jars in particular looked small and sad, sitting in their cupboard, waiting for Mrs Lewis – who would never return for them – to come and pick them up and fill them once again with a rich lemon curd or a ‘marmalade with a twist’. She’d leave them outside his door once a week on Tuesdays, until she didn’t.

The bronze-rimmed clock beside the door – one of many strategically placed timepieces to grace the walls of the apartment –told Heston it was thirty eight minutes past ten. And no Anabelle Glass. This worried him for several reasons, reasons he then decided to write into the house martin book:

Reasons to be concerned over Anabelle Glass’s mysterious disappearance:

1. It is midmorning.

2. Her phone has rung and has not been answered.

3. It is a weekday and on weekdays Anabelle has to go to work (aside: workplace still unknown).

Heston set down his pen and notebook and checked his wristwatch. It was an ancient thing that worked less than it broke and trapped his arm hairs inside its strap sometimes. Mid-morning meant that he could make the switch from Rooibos to English Breakfast tea, switching cups and teaspoons. This wasn’t wasteful, because Heston would return to these cups once it was mid-afternoon.

The door across the hall remained shut and the corridor stayed empty.

Several hours later, Heston heard footsteps down the corridor. He left his book where it was and moved to the looking glass. House martin booklet left shirt pocket, where he’d kept it, thinking that yes, I may need this later and pen was poised.

A large man, muscled in places muscles didn’t usually reside, and with hair cut so close to his scalp it was a wonder his skin hadn’t been nicked in the process, strode into view. The man paused outside Anabelle Glass’s door and from the other side of the looking glass, Heston’s throat went dry.

This man was a complete stranger. In all of Heston’s many notebooks, particularly in his house martin collection, there had never been mention of this huge, almost-bald man. His hands were raised to door level and he was standing at a slight angle – serendipitous for Heston’s viewpoint – and began to work at Anabelle Glass’s lock. Those thick fingers looked like they shouldn’t have been able to do anything nimble, let alone jiggle some sort of lock-picking tools in such a manner as to open her door – but open it they did.

Heston watched as the huge man stepped into the room, dwarfing the doorframe comically. Then, for many long moments, Heston was left to watch the closed door, as though the worn paint and scratch marks on it could tell him what was going on behind it. Faint noises travelled across the floors and to Heston’s ears: the man moving heavily about her apartment and the scraping of furniture. A pang of jealousy had Heston clutching his pen a little tighter – this man, this intruder, was seeing the inside of the apartment Heston had been preoccupied with for years. Where Heston had barely made it past the front door in his findings, this man had barged his way in and was seeing what Heston had imagined seeing for so long.

Not for the first time, Heston hated that he couldn’t leave Apartment 5a.

Three minutes and thirty two seconds passed before the man returned. He had a thick wad of files in his hands, a determination in his eyes and lines etched into his forehead. As he came through the door Heston could see his face perfectly, but only looked for a moment before trying to see past the huge body and into the elusive Apartment 5b. A wasted attempt: the only thing visible was shadow-work and the ghostly shapes of furniture.

The man shut the door behind him, the action making the muscles in his biceps coil like a snake moving underneath his skin, and stilled on his feet. He was looking at Heston’s door, now. Heston’s apartment. Throat thick with something unnameable, blocked by a tongue too big for it and teeth that didn’t feel quite right, Heston held his breath and his skin broke out in shivers whilst being far too hot at the same time – the hairs on every single body part were standing on end. Breathing? Fast. Too fast. It was eerie: did this intruder know Heston was watching? How could he? He couldn’t – but he watched Heston’s door for several long moments before moving back down the corridor the way he’d originally come.

Within the walls of Apartment 5a, Heston slid to the floor and clutched at his corduroy trousers, trying to calm himself. He lifted a hand in front of his face and couldn’t keep it from shaking. It was quiet, save the ticking of many clocks and the uneven, ragged breathing of the man on the floor.

"i heard garlic helps."

she was the weirdo. the freak. the outcast.

her boyfriend asked "how are you?"

she said "i'm fine."

he believed her

she raised the razor to her wrist

a butterfly was to die

she wore long sleeves the next day

her artwork was hidden beneath her clothes

the red strokes staining her porcelain skin

her lips were dry

her face was bruised

her body was broken

there she lay

hoping death would take her

and he came

placing a kiss upon her cold lips

the life drained out of her

as she let him devour her soul

his needs satisfied

her dreams becoming reality

she smiled

"take that." she whispered

a reminder of all the pain they had caused

I rode the updraft of emotion

of your shy smile, your wicked brow.

I saw all of you, especially the parts

You hid the most. The secrets.

They were my favorite.

The fragile child with its pain and grace.

The stealthy strength of your manhood.

Brilliantly bold and integrally complex.

The humor of your dispirited soul.

Holding strong the anchor of your empire.

I enjoyed your splendor, beyond reason.

How it pained me to spotlight the flaw.

To turn the gaze outward, gently.

You are such a brilliant masterpiece.

To temper your storm I will send you

the most beautiful of all angels.

She will wear red and love you as you deserve.

^V^

It was a French flavoured summer in 1980 when I fell in love with my chocolate eyed stranger. We were recent arrivals to Europe, having just moved from England to Germany with my Mother, Sister and Victorian values Stepfather (who steadfastly maintained the look and demeanour of a chap that had just finished piloting a Navy ship).

My Sister and I abhorred the very thought of moving to another continent away from friends, family and our real Father, but we had been given no choice. In another time and different frame of mind, we would have relished the experience, the assault on the senses; but I was 11 and she was nearly 13 and relish it we did not.

Still reeling from the culture shock of 80′s Europe, we embarked on a leather seated and over-heated epic journey by means of an old brown Rover to the South of France for a holiday in Juan-le-Pin. It being my first time in France, I swam through waves of fluid language, basic toilets, unctuous stinking cheeses, wine syphoned from vats in farms and daily new crispy and lengthy bread. It was enchanting.

Then there were the packed topless beaches hugging the bright blue Mediterranean, heaven itself for a boy whose fascination with the female form had been smouldering since he was five. Yes, at five my captivation with the workings of woman started. I grew up in an era of British newspapers being emblazoned with brazen and brash topless beauties; Sunday magazines rammed to capacity with more. Airbrushing was yet to exist, so glimpses of pubic hair and entire smudges of flattened 70′s body hair could be easily pored over in the lingerie section of catalogues.

And pore over them I did. Of course, I had yet to fully understand the meaning of the thrill the taunting representations shot through me, nor did I understand my first girl-induced erection stood next to the new arrival at school that I liked when I was only five. Erections had been passed off by my Mother as my ‘needing a wee’ when I asked what was happening to my young hard penis, so ignorance reigned.

Nothing was finer than drawing my crude interpretation of naked bodies, lovingly scribbled in scrapbooks next to images carefully cut, tongue protruding, from said newpapers and magazines. I was obsessed.

So, years before I was able to act upon the very urges I had yet to comprehend, I found myself on these sizzling, flesh filled sandy stretches of Southern France surrounded by girls and women frolicking in near nakedness. There were breasts of all sizes, ones that had yet to develop, others that were in the process of budding; then the women with all sizes of fully developed chests. Body sizes and different shapes, young through to old, all held my rapt attention. All were so fascinating to me, I had no preference at an age where I was the taboo.

Then there were the delightful glimpses I stole when positioned in such a way as to peer down bikini bottoms stretched taught across protruding hipbones; tufts of hair and folds of flesh on display if gaps gaped, or angles allowed. How I made the angles allow. This little prepubescent pervert worked diligently for his visual fare.

Daily, I stared until my eyes blanked from the sun’s glare on taught tanned bellies, glistening globes, and I carried a yearning I had no channel for, no understanding of venting.

Balmy, baked days slid by like this, and I would return to our campsite at the end of the day yearning for more. We would normally eat in newly acquired, at least for three of our party of four, European ways. Gooey cheeses, that day’s baguette, salad with oils and wine in copious cheap quantities, poured from large plastic containers filled earnestly at farms and vineyards. Geckos and mosquitos, bugs and colourful birds would be our soundtrack, as I chewed upon food and thoughts, masticating on the day’s stolen fleshy glimpses, marvelling at the realness of it all.

We would venture out rarely. My Stepfather was one predisposed to spending as little as possible in life, but even he occasionally sought different fare, some heated food served by locals; and so, finally, I was to visit my first French restaurant.

A new world, it was, of sound, colour, smells and nuance. Packed to the rafters with locals rather than bloated with tourists, it was authentic, real. Not for us an English translation on the menu. It evoked in me a thrill filled fear, and that carries through with me to this day; the love of the new and the electric rush of being thrown out of my cotton-wool filled rut.

Once seated, I took in the vista of tables of all sizes laid out in front of me, like the clusters of houses and dissecting streets of an ancient Mediterranean town when viewed from above. They were everything a tourist could expect. Romantic couples leaning in over checked tablecloth to whisper sweet nothings impossible to hear over the cacophony of noise, swarthy workmen with ruddy cheeks, evidently still on their post work drinks and eats; through to the families of all sizes making up the majority of the restaurants wall of noise.

Openly gawking at the generations of gesticulating French in front of me, I marvelled at how social it looked, how joyous. An ongoing celebration of blood and kin over broken bread and wine and beer. As I looked about, my hungry gaze a nosy lighthouse; my beam reflected in the dark eye of the girl that was to be my love. She was sat amid the throng of the largest table, calm amid the sea of relatives shouting and laughing around her.

Caramel skin and eyes deep and brown. Glossy black hair in a bob that framed the angelic beauty of her exquisite French face. She wore a simple white summer dress that was milk on the coffee of her skin. I had been gulping her in as she watched me, smiling her dimples so gently back at this obvious stranger, this English boy. I must have blushed, then grinned back into her bottomless brown gaze. She laughed, icing white smile that unlocked butterflies I didn’t know were locked within me. My stomach flipped and I fell hopelessly in love with this beautiful stranger.

Seconds elapsed in that lifetime, until parental demands meant my attention had to be turned to ordering. Whilst I did, I took slices of her from across the room and ate her up. How she blew hair out of her face when it fell into her gaze. How she tucked her star-white bra strap back under her dress each time it snuck out to play. How she ate only with a fork and sipped her wine. I ached to be that wine. Our eyes met, again and again, striking the room silent as the sparks flew between. Smiles, dimples, blushes and an as yet non-verbal bond.

No one noticed, as we were kids. She, what I could only uneducated guess as 13 or so, purely by physicality of her from across the room and me just 11. To be nearer, I orchestrated a need for the toilet, sure that we would meet; the door to which was adjacent to the end of my French fancy’s table. I swam through her thick gaze, afire as I walked that walk to the conveniences. Her stare mirrored what I felt as I glided by, eyes locked in on hers.

Finally, I exited the toilette where heart stoppingly, she was there in front of me in the vestibule between the cubicles and the restaurant. All was quiet. We said nothing, just digested each other, our smiles inches apart. She was slightly taller than me, and seemed to float in an aura of sun kissed skin and innocence.

I went to speak, but she placed a finger on my mouth so that I smelt another world. Her fingers were bread, wine, musk, hair, lemons, salt and life. I was giddy as she peered into my soul, her bee stung lips parting to utter a ‘ssshhh’.

My world fell away when she replaced her finger with her slightly parted mouth, and gently kissed me with plump teenage lips, wetly, pushing her tight young body against my clumsy inexperience, her pudenda nudging my throbbing unfulfilled and building need.

She had to have felt my spasm, my trembling body killed by her beauty, grace, her smell. And then, she turned and left me. One wave, a cheeky peek over her shoulder and with a laugh she lifted up the back of her bright white dress, flashed her pert, pink knickers, tan lines, tight golden thighs with sun beached hairs; and flounced out.

My heart broke when I finally emerged, composed, to her family having left forever. I carry her everywhere, and my French girl unknowingly never lets me go.