Tangents Archives - Prosaic Shades of Gray

Invocation

Posted on February 27, 2013October 13, 2022 by KZ

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing

Day 27: “And That’s Why I Got Drunk”
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We raise our glasses to the inexhaustible variety of life, to all of those separate moments of sameness wrought with stagnancy, or trifling human catastrophe — to those tentative steps towards hopeful beginnings, or in deference to sadder times marked with the bitterness of inevitable ends. We toast to friends both new and old, to the promise or passing of lovers, to mothers both living and long since lost.

Call Me a Messenger

Posted on February 9, 2013October 13, 2022 by KZ

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing

Day 9: “15 minutes”
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They say the course of an entire lifetime can change in the span of fifteen minutes. During that final moment of violence in Ben’s unremarkable life, I imagine he required no longer than just a few seconds to take his aim and fire. I don’t really know for sure, because I wasn’t there. I suspect it had been a very long time since anybody had come around to check on Ben.

Visions of the Collective Breath

Posted on February 8, 2012October 11, 2022 by KZ

I lament the loss of diminishing vision, but what is it I’m supposed to be seeing? I glimpse those enticing sights feathering along the breeze, dancing at heights just beyond my reach. They brush the tips of my naked paws and taunt my rudimentary processes of thought before I can snatch them greedily within my…

Incomplete Thoughts

Posted on January 19, 2012October 11, 2022 by KZ

Free will is such a constricting thing. I have dreams of fatigue, of sleep within sleep, respite in the face of so much tiring certainty. The haste of living creates a hateful kind of glaze that coats the landscape beneath familiar layers of reimagined wrinkles. In this world, the living will forever be plagued by…

“For a Saint” – Part IV

Posted on November 11, 2010October 11, 2022 by KZ

Their machinery was too much for you, oh fallen saint oh living Dream, oh healing life a love denied through faceless, insidious plague Yet in lack of limbs and human warmth in lack of breath and mortal sense though rooms may stand in lonesome depth and though sin may stand to dwell again in absence…

This Is the Way it Begins

Posted on September 17, 2010October 11, 2022 by KZ

Much of this life is tinged with misdirection, mistaken notions, unconscious resentment dressed in justified indignance, as if the validity of civil rage were any better than the ferocious roars of primal urge. We monsters of monstrous insignificance, blips of uncertain near-certainties, existing by the nature of collapsed intention, explosions and collisions of particles gathered…

Someday Soon

Posted on August 15, 2010October 11, 2022 by KZ

I can’t wait. One day far or near into the future, my words will be re-spoken, awakening a memory of significance in motion, salvation through a Creator of my choice, and followers will find meaning through my ludicrous insistence, instances of miracles and revelations which awaken old passions and which dull the inner cries, independent…

I Am Not Him, But He Is Me

Posted on February 6, 2009October 11, 2022 by KZ

Some friendships are meant to be remembered, and some are easily forgotten. But then there are some friendships that have a way of inflicting themselves on you. They grasp you by your guilty obligations, your quiet frustrations. Private notions of loyalty and compassion degrade over time, varnished by a silenced eternity of stifled resentment. These…

On Being Saved

Posted on August 28, 2006April 25, 2022 by KZ

Define salvation. The mind immediately grasps for explanations of the metaphysical, recollections of the mystical, wisps of stardust and Divine refuse, ethereal trails of holy time, thoughts, visions, majestic myths. The Divine. We all have some joker in the sky to blame for our joys and our woes, existence of flesh, the theoretical residence of…

For Ben

Posted on April 17, 2006April 25, 2022 by KZ

Stories never begin with “Once upon a time” anymore. I imagine there must have been a time when “Once upon a time” was the noblest salutation a storyteller could say to preface his tales. No longer, I guess. Compulsion urges us for constant change — and so we bend a little each time so that…