Category Archives: prose

March 2, 2021 · 2:18 pm

One Way Through – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lillian is hosting Haibun with a focus on walking down memory lane.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Walk With Me Down Memory Lane

Surreal Art Work by Jacek Yerka and found at image.slidesharecdn.com

“Everybody should keep some grip on childhood, even as a grownup.” Tim Curry

One Way Through

As spring made way for summer everything seemed full and lush, even the northern July evenings were slightly longer than the ending of Hey Jude which was idyllic when sleep seemed like theft of life. But there were dark tones in this summer of light. Why was mum so frightened, why were dad's fists so loud? It was a house of mixed feelings like the edge of a wave teetering near rocks.

Sometimes there was a deep silence, followed by absence. Baby-sitters appeared at intervals, young couples whose tongues were intertwined in closed eyes of desire, though not so much before I was given a cup of cocoa and soon sent to bed.

Our house wasn't ancient, but it was easy to hear anyone coming up the stairs, so I knew I could please myself in a wonderland. So I would throw back the curtains and marvel at the light, open the window and dangle my legs over the ledge. I was lost in the wonder of peace and stillness, dreaming of tigers, Sherwood Forest, and rescuing Alice from queens unknown. This was my refuge.


I sailed the angry sea
past dark resolution rocks
you are my refuge.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 16, 2021 · 4:30 pm

Which Way? – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Kim is hosting Prosery with an invitation to use a line from the poem ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ by William Butler Yeats. The line is: “I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery

Photo: found at juggernautmc.com

“We have to get used to the idea that at the most important crossroads in our life there are no signs.” Ernest Hemingway.

Which Way?

I wanted to take time with my old friends who were welling up in my chest. Where to in my life now, seemed to be the most pressing question stirring my emotions. I sought the pilgrims trail, so I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head and heart. Eventually the walk began to clear my head, and then I came to a crossroad, which I received as a question. What now, do I turn at either side or go on, or even stay where I am? What does this mean for me? The Irish gave a word for this, trasna or crossing place, to cross over. It means choosing a move. This fire in me has brought me to a turning point, and I mean to go on. So, which way will I choose, which path will I take?

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 2, 2021 · 4:04 pm

The Drought – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting Haibun with an invitation to write about the eagle.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Eagle

Photo: https://publications.australian.museum/ showing a wedge tailed eagle.

“Fierce eagles do not produce timorous doves.” Horace

The Drought

45c and the road, straighter than straight, rolling beyond what the rusted sign advised. Blues, liquid, twelve bar, driving through this dry land. Paddocks hollow and stricken, rain forsaken for so long now, nothing holds in this dust. Crows picking the eyes out of everything that ceases to move, that cadaver buffet for pall bearers.

The gates blur in fifth, the barbed wire whispers strained songs of lament and I weep as I pass the delusion of hope trying to bale non-existent hay, the sadness of twenty bales to a hundred acres. And I weep for this place where endings complete and there are no obvious beginnings.

I slow as I see the spectre eyeing emaciated sheep. The angel of death eyes me and I nod in deference, better an ending than tortured horizons. I wave my blessing, thankful that the feathered euthanasia will ease the shepherds pain. In this moment the eagle is surgeon, priest and mourner, holding a ritual, taking death for life.


Life now surrendered
throat offered for sacrifice
feathered friend loves life

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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January 19, 2021 · 2:16 pm

The Tides That So Easily Turn And Pull – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting Prosery with an invitation to take a line form one of Mary Oliver’s poems – ‘Spring Azures’, “Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy.” and use it in a piece of prose.

Photo: wallpaper cave.com

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” A.A. Milne

The Tides That So Easily Turn And Pull

I launched the kayak, noting everything in my periphery and set forth forth with a flourish, gliding across the glassy, still, estuary. this was morning, but not my life. I launched equally as carefully under my mother’s watchful eye, but the estuary of life was never glassy or still in my experience. However, I had to start somewhere, and my own dictum is, don’t dismiss the wisdom of the young who are simply shifting gears through the tide of life which is so fickle. We carry our own weights, the things we love, the things that haunt, the things we enjoy, and that which brings pain, yes, even that. Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy and it is more than enough to bear when I wish I could steady the tides that so easily turn and pull us against ourselves.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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December 8, 2020 · 1:46 pm

Writing Through – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lilian is hosting Prosery and inviting us to use the line “Reading what I have just written, I now believe.” from Louise Gluck’s work ‘Afterward.’ dVerse Poets – Prosery

Photo: pixabay.com

“Journal writing gives us insights into who we are, who we were, and who we can become.” Sandra Marinella

Writing Through

My heart was pounding, I was ready to burst, I would spill over, I would be consumed in my emotion. An all consuming anger possessed me. Why did he say that and in such a tone? Why did he look at me that way? I just wanted to fire back and level the field, but the words wouldn’t come and I felt everyone’s eyes. I felt isolated in this moment of exposure, so naked before the world. I said nothing then, but I resolved to journal and reflect later.

Reading what I have just written, I now believe that I was lost in reactive feeling. I know I experience grief as a strange land, but this surprised me. The death of those close stirs the heart in ways beyond the rational moments imagined. Strange how writing and reflecting can so simply offer opportunity of transformation.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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November 10, 2020 · 4:14 pm

There I Really Am – Prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Prosery where we are invited to write 144 words including a provided line. Merril has given us a Liesel Mueller line from her poem ‘Drawings By Children’ – “There is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles.’

dVerse Poets – Prosery

Photo: pixabay.com

There I Really Am

There is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles. I claimed it long ago, it is my favourite space, but it just takes time to get there. It’s not that I’ve forgotten the way, it’s just simply that I don’t make enough time to wander there. But days come when I have to be there. It’s the space where I find my still point and enter into silence, well, mostly. Somedays my irascible shadow is less than golden and flings up the dust and detritus of my life as a taunt, a distraction. If I pay no attention it doesn’t go away, so I let it have a little reign until it outruns itself and peters out and I return to myself. There is nothing behind that wall except the real me letting the winds of time whistle through me.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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October 13, 2020 · 3:16 pm

So Tricky (Really) – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

Kim at dVerse is hosting Prosery, and she has given us a D.H. Lawrence line – “We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of time.” from his poem ‘Hummingbird.’ dVerse Poets – Prosery – Telescope of Time

Photo: ya-native.com Wounded Knee protest 1973

“I think we ought to move tanks, the whole goddamned thing. Put a division in there, if necessary ….” Richard Nixon

So Tricky (Really)

Even though we look at him through the wrong end of the telescope of time doesn’t change the simple fact that he is still the same. Making him smaller doesn’t make him any less. And time is not elastic enough to change the facts, you can’t wallpaper over the truth, no matter how hard you try. No amount of forgiveness will enable forgetting. I know that those who’ve come after him have certainly made him look better, but really he’s not. To say one thing and do another, to promise what you know you will never do, never want to do, in spite of the innocent lives you trammelled, never even cared about. And for what, the vainglory of just maybe being a hero? The plumbers let you down? That wasn’t the real issue. Your smallness was your need to have power.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

The litany of Wounded Knee, Kent State, Vietnam, Cambodia, Watergate ….

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September 15, 2020 · 5:55 am

Amantes del la Luna – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

Host Merril at dVerse has invited us to consider a line from a Mary Oliver poem for a prose piece (144 words). dVerse Poets – Prosery – Moonbeams and Moon Dreams

I have been writing about Moon for some time so this landed in a week of moon thoughts.

The line is: “In their dreams they sleep with the moon.” from Mary Oliver ‘Death at Wind River’

Image: abstract.desktopnexus.com

“Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.” Khaled Hosseini

Amantes de la Luna (Lovers of the Moon)

Moon disrobed the darkness, her eyes lighting everyone who ventured to the edge of night. She was an illumine of all that is love in that sacred moment as she touched the tide of rising feeling by the shore of desire that ached with her beauty. The young men are too distracted to notice, they foolishly chase after lesser stars, mere reflections of momentary excitement lost in the ripples of time. But Moon doesn’t mind, the tides come and go in a gentle rhythm, and they will soon enough take notice of her. Besides, she has plenty of lovers. The older men adore her and sigh at her memory, holding her close in their hearts. Through wax and wane they remember the tender intimacies of her soft glow and her warm grace, and in their dreams they sleep with Moon as once they did.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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August 18, 2020 · 3:32 pm

Those Days – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

Merril at dVerse has invited us to write a piece of prose (144 words) and to include the line from Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s ‘A Time’

dVerse Poets – Prosery

Image: pixabay.com

“That’s what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead.” Samuel Beckett.

Those Days

There’s a time and a place, but who knows when a sound, a taste, might become a portal to a golden era perfected in the mind as a pluperfect distortion approaching a kaleidoscopic experience of emotion and memory, a trickster dressed seductively in sentimental scant playing with my feelings. In those moments I feel as if I’m falling into a melliferous treacle of spreading activation that would hold me in some romanticised yesterday colonised by nostalgia and no sense of reality at all. Is this my measure of happiness, success, or progression? Is it trustworthy even in its signifiers, those signs and symbols truncated as truths embodied in codes only dreams hint at? But, when it is over, said and done, it was a time, and there was never enough of it, whatever it was. To recapture the feeling of moments is my adiction.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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June 9, 2020 · 3:37 pm

Two Hearts – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

Merril at dVerse has invited us to write a piece of prose using the words “We go in different directions down the imperturbable street.” by Gwendolyn Brooks.

dVerse Poets – Prosery






Photo: businessinsider.com.au










“How weird it was to drive streets I knew so well. What a different perspective”  





Two Hearts





Should we go in different directions down the imperturbable street we might discover a confusion of serenity that, in fact, all is not what it seems. In my view all is chaotic fulmination, voices ringing off concrete, the air thick and potent with energy, only to be swallowed in the humous of bordered gardens as dusk ensues, waiting for dawn. In your view, all is serene and in its place, a stillness and a quiet resolve of patient ferment pervading the air. It just happens to be that we are going the same way, though in very different directions down the same street. Somewhere in the parallel journey we find the middle line without looking. There’re no surrendering views, just two trapeze artists in a shakedown in the kingdom known as middle road. Life is richer that way. Two hearts are better than eyes.





©Paul Vincent Cannon

			

	
	

		
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