conspire and confound

It is the hour of restless beds, of sinking shadows and the sound of libidinal teeth scraping at their romances. It is the time of stimulation or sedation, the time of spinning wheels and broken thoughts. Sad cycles and old songs, other lives burning bright in the distant language of my mind. I would sift through the usual ruins, shallow graves and fresh shaped idols, faithless scripture and aimless selves. I would touch the spirits that never inspire, the focal point of all my shabby desires, the ideals and ideas that they have ground down. It is the hour of weary dirges, tears spilt for all those poor swords beaten into crummy plows, the burned letters and photos that follow me like diesel fumes haunting the ill-lit freeways. Only words, sorry travelers, ghostly viruses to cup and spill upon all that is left of the blank page.

I will probably read away the rest of the night. I am easily distracted by well-formed prose and earnestly hewn poems. It isn't so much that reading resolves any of the creeping lonesome thoughts, or cures my illness. It pauses the pursuit, limits the flow of these aimless feelings and dully weighted words. A borrowed mind to ease the tired clamber of my own. Better words used with prudence and with skill, saving me, for those long moments, from myself.

The world is full of the press and flee of intent and happenstance. Whatever the time, whatever the weather, the whole sorry play is on. Just in the tiny sliver of human activity that we are bound to think so special the entire range of emotions and actions and calamities and miracles that we so dread and enjoy are happening, all but at once. The bulk of life that doesn't read or write is quite busy too, feeding and breeding and living and dying, blazing away in lives we can not know and do not understand. Millions of those are feasting upon you as you read this-- probably an order more are at work on me. An untold number of collisions are occurring on a sub-atomic level as my grubby paws strike these keys, miracle compounding miracle. I conspire with these legions, adorn this confluence of forces with my name and my nature, and further confound the culture with this mimicry of language. Another empty hour left as smoke and ash. Another set of contradictions aimed at spaces in-between.