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Prose Without Meaning

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A boy claps his hands and two clay pigeons come to life and fly off into nowhere—Nazarene.  Nazarene is too full of blood, too full of nothingness—

no way out except the way you came;

and I’m too old to understand anything; just fears—fear of being shot randomly and with abandon on the cold dark highway—death doesn’t have any more meaning than life—

Nazarene—

and you haven’t said much since you’ve been here, have you—the lover doesn’t weep anymore, doesn’t smile—just photographs from a life long forgotten; triptych of maudlin patina—all narrative is false—

filth; seduction in the darkest of places; our favorite song has grown abstract; has been rendered soundless by our very achievements in deceit; I unzip you, and the lion within a lion is ill, sickly; you are no longer anything except what’s around you; a sigh still hangs above the kitchen table:  Where is Home?

I dis-embowel you—have long ago forgotten why I never loved you—

silence is what you make of it.

  • Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Louis Bourgeois is primarily a poet who has also published translations, fiction, memoirs and interviews in more than two hundred magazines and journals in North America, Europe and Asia. He holds a BA in English from Louisiana State University and was the first graduate of the University of Mississippi's MFA program in Creative Writing. He is the Executive Director of VOX Press as well as the Program Director for the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative.