Monday, March 29, 2010

we claim the kingdom

The moon submerges beneath a tide of dark clouds, casting a quiet flare in the distance. Street lights flicker and buzz in a way no bee has ever sounded. A cab flips a U turn, pulling a pedestrian from the curb. A man with a fire in his head smokes sullenly on his front porch. Ten thousand other details too, to make up nothing happening.

Morning breaks like this, busy and uneventful, when you are up early for no reason other than habit. When the only work you have left is that of routine and of imagination. Before the onslaught of news stories, before the awful burden of other people, this is the only weight you carry. Leaden feet and warning aches, the dismal glow of others' dreams.

We all have our lapses, we all have gaps in the continuity that make our tired explanations that much worse in the rigors of belief. Knowing the heart by elimination, excluding all the fraught possibilities so that our improbable selves are discovered. Gestures of movie picture grace, spilling every comfortable lie to shine these giddy delusions. Mouthing smug condemnations while wallowing in some narrow heaven, we claim the kingdom we make from all these awful cages.

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