As I sit here, the morning offers stillness, silence, and the quiet ritual of coffee. But when afternoon arrives, so does the news that threatens to disturb it all.
A prose poem about solitude, emotional intrusion, and the desperate request for one more cup to hold back the blues.
I prefer the stillness and quiet, drinking in the fragrant silence. Dark, rich, filtered
Source: A Refill Please #Prose #Poetry – The Artist From The Inside Out
Sitting with this weight. Breaking down the tension.
I can claim whatever the hell I want, change my mind if I desire to. I am full and I am empty. Arc and bend. Pliable like clay. Pieces of me strewn across the past. My past.
What lies in front of me?
Follow the tension to its end on my Substack.
Source: The Fall – Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Heavy in humidity and in heart, I pound the keys hoping for an answer to my intense emotional dismay to friction in contact with the human race. I divested my spirit from wealth in breast to bankruptcy in human decay. Function serves no purpose as I tumble about for words to lick the sodden breath from my taste buds and beat the gravitational pull backwards. As time races ahead of my slow motion pace it caresses inwards. Banter and blase’ form a pact to immobilize the speed in which I set my movements, as though this moment of time is lost in space, floating in a lulling-gentle-sway looping like a tape stuck on replay.
© Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Enzo Tommasi on Unsplash
Tumult renders me paralyzed as the day holds silent in no particular manner still, silent, dry mist in and about this residence. The grip of Monday jeers at my shock of solitude not welcomed and concretizes itself into a badgering Blue Jay that won’t go away. Gray cloudy chills roll through the hours, calling up memories and feelings of my frenzied youth. Coffee laden chatter and crowded thoughts in coffee shops that never stop. Paint brush marathon’s beating the canvas not aware of the dampness or darkness or late hours, frantic. Fragile flowers, limp yellows boxed in my studio without care of time passing and the caffeine—electricity racing around in my mouth, fuels and spews out of my cursing lips. Fingertips lit like bolts of lightning. I erect that power-shock today as I sit in tumult rolling like tumbleweeds, in the fractured hour of this now afternoon, of this shitty Monday blues. Clouded gray showers with doom possible on the horizon if no answers start rising, clearing my head from this paralyzing tumult of misty bliss!
© Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Paola Chaaya on Unsplash
You think you over something until it turns around and bites you on the ass, that dirty dog gnarling right in your face, go away. Go away to some other far away place!
Time to get up, get up before you lose yourself, your dreams. Depression is ugly, it bites you on the ass and doesn’t put a band-aid on it. Depression is for the lonely who hides it from the world, from the people who claim they care.
Love? What is it? Is it for the lonely only?
Never sharing, always alone.
Where is my love? I’ve got dry riverbeds etched on my cheeks,
that have been burned there by my tears. Some folks call them wrinkles. I call them dried out river beds, creeks that have been etched out by the river of tears streaming down my face.
What’s this all about?
I burn for love
Wildfire through my heart
Causing an earthquake of longing, that rolls down my body
in an avalanche of pain.
Who wants this leftover, lukewarm love?
I,
Me,
The miserable one.
Why do I torture my heart
with this roundabout complaint?
Will I never find light to fill my heart with feathers,
instead of lead?
Who has darkened my soul to never breathe
sweetness, or to see sunshine again?
Why?
What have I done to deserve dire, dark and dread?
I’ve felt the dead, played
with the night-time way too long,
it is my closest cousin.
Now is the time to bring on the sun-
Enough with this gnarling dog!
You think you’re over something
then it turns around and bites
you on the ass; rabid, feral, and furious.
Who knows?
I just describe,
it’s all about what
resides in the darkest
depths of your mind.
I guess it’s like wanting
to be understood, heard
accepted, like “ah-ha, I get it”
How do you register it?
I can paint it in so many
different, similar, exact colors!
What the hell am I talking about?
This cauldron of fire churning my gut
has put me into this permanent rut!
You think you’re over something
’til your not.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by mark chaves on Unsplash
#Prose #Poetry #MentalHealth #Grief
When I thought about
how much I love you
lingering thoughts of love
made me turn to water.
I wept inside
when I thought how close
we’ve gotten to the love
I thought we’d forgotten
for each other. A love that
was built from our lifetime
together, connected by blood.
We can never erase-that bond
no matter what.
Today I cried uncontrollably
when I thought of the beautiful
children you brought into this
world, into my life, our lives.
That is what it’s all about-
Love- this fountain that we
gather at to quench our thirst
from the desert of wayward
paths, lost at times without
Sight- I wept at the sight of
our gathering- back from our long
journey’s apart.
Love made me turn to water today.
I reflected on our bond, welling up inside
drinking the love of lifetimes spent
before, here, now, with the sweetness
of the children you brought to
my life, our lives.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
#Poetry #love #longformpoetry
