Category Archives: prose

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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		May 12, 2020 · 3:21 pm	


	
The Singer Of Love Songs – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon
	

		
dVerse Poets – Prosery


Bjorn at dVerse has invited us to write a piece of prose including the line “His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream” from Maya Angelou’s ‘Caged Bird’


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Image: yogamountainstudio.com


 


“Hope is a waking dream.”  Aristotle


The Singer Of Love Songs


O the singer of love songs, his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream in the middle of a fire, in the middle of a torrent, a tumult. And there the scattered bones of love mock his impertinent hope beyond broken idols and lost moments that speak of eternal anguish. His is no ordinary voice. His hope is never quenched by that malady of darkness. He dares to speak of tomorrow as if nothing else were sure at all, that indeed, nothing else matters. His voice is clothed in a raiment of beauty that lifts the soul like one transported by an angelic choir to a joyful ether of heart, away from the mocking shadows of doubt. O the singer of love songs, his shadow shouts into light as soft caress of l’armour, desiring the world to rise in love and sing together once more.


©Paul Vincent Cannon


Paul, pvcann.com

			

	
	

		
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		April 14, 2020 · 3:31 pm	


	
There’s No Train Today – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon
	

		
dVerse Poets – Prosery


Sarah at dVerse has invited us to write a piece of prose to a max of 144 words and incorporating the line “No one left and no one came on the bare platform.” from ‘Adelstrop’ by Edward Thomas.


1200px-Harpenden_Train_Station.jpg


Photo: Wikimedia Commons


 


“While no one can change the outcome of dementia or Alzheimer’s, with the right support you can change the journey.”  Tara Reed


 


There’s No Train Today


Diane saw the single yellow daisy and she caught herself smiling, and she drifted, recalling significant daisy moments, like the time she and David, her late husband, had walked country lanes picking flowers, carefree it seemed, and she felt a yearning though she couldn’t quite place it. It troubled her, but she let it go. Then she remembered the train station and the daisies growing at the southern end of the platform. Was that smoke she could smell? Diane looked up but no train was coming, in fact, it was unusually quiet. After a time she noticed that no one left and no one came on the bare platform. How strange. and then suddenly, a young woman appeared and Diane asked: “Where’s the train?” The young woman smiled and said “It’s okay mum, it’s Julie, I’m your daughter. There’s no train today, you’re reminiscing.”


©Paul Vincent Cannon


Paul, pvcann.com

			

	
	

		
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		March 17, 2020 · 2:04 pm	


	
Love Is There – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon
	

		
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Photo: dreamstime.com


 


“Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.”  Rabindranath Tagore


 


Love Is There


I’m not sure that I can trace beginnings or endings. Once I thought I could, but now I’m not so certain. The dualities of childhood eventually and thankfully slipped away in youth, so that sharp lines and edges, defined density of colours, even surety of perception, all faded in time. To just be in the moment seemed out of reach, until the great letting go, to surrender to ebb and flow without fear or seeking reason was, in the end, the greatest of joys. Even now I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended. But looking back, the question makes no sense. Starts and endings are merely endings and starts. You see love doesn’t start or end, it just is. Somehow I knew, know, that love circles, but I must trust and embody its seamless, wondrous, passionate rhythm.


 


©Paul Vincent Cannon


Paul, pvcann.com

			

	
	

		
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		February 18, 2020 · 7:28 am	


	
Falling Into You – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon
	

		
dVerse Poets – Prosery


Kim at dVerse has invited us to write a prose piece of 144 words using the line “There are moments caught between heartbeats.” from a poem by Louis MacNiece titled ‘Coda.’


iloveyou.jpg


Photo: http://www.wallpaperg.com


Falling Into You


There are moments caught between heartbeats, just as in those moments of solitude when one questions the point between the inward and outward breath. Or where the water I walked in earlier today, where will it be now? As to pinpointing any definitive moment, well, there is only a kind of knowing by doing, where there arise moments between seeing and feeling. Moments when time falls away and I fall into you and we float so lightly on the energy we so effortlessly generate, lighting our world with a felt glow. for a brief moment time speeds as yet it slows, a quantum of pleasure, like salmon forging upstream, we reach that point of no return, that precipice of tipping where we rise yet descend, and descend yet rise, bathed in an inner sunset, that warm glow between heartbeats falling into you.


©Paul Vincent Cannon


Paul, pvcann.com

			

	
	

		
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		February 12, 2020 · 4:23 pm	


	
Truth – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
	

		
dVerse Poetics – Black History Month


Anmol at dVerse has invited us to write a poem focussing on Black History Month.


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Photo: shutterstock.com


“I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”  James Baldwin


Truth


I saw the branches of yesterdays tree

where hemp fibres once held the

beauty of humanity as if it were

merely wrapping paper

to be discarded rather than loved,

strange how truth is pigmented

in the mind, yet colonises the heart,

so easily betraying the lies

we facade for the sake of niceties

while denying a generation.


©Paul Vincent Cannon


Paul, pvcann.com

			

	
	

		
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