mass

What use is sunlight when the world huddles, shrouded in gray? What use is starlight when the stars went out long before any thought of wishing was born? The coffee has gone cold, sitting there in the cup. The dust has clabbered into totems of beasts and bugs, cluttering the corners, falling with the light. I woke without knowing the day or place of this existence. I woke without any thought other than the work I imagined I would miss. What use is this name, crowded by epithets and invective while the word can go away?

Every sabbath has its labors, every holiday its rituals and mass. Weight will change depending on how things stand. Location depends on the relationship of markers and landmarks, everywhere this aggregation of objects and reflections. This aching limb, this worried mirror. The songs played so often they are bereft of music. The poem recited from heart losing every least flavor of blood.

I wrote it down because I have that sickness, that need to say. I wrote it down because I long ago mistook words for work. Names and places and dismal images shaking in the rear view mirror. Thoughts and glimpses and longing endured so long it feels like the press of gravity upon my shoulders. Tricks and treats, carnival feats. Each atom restless, swaddled in odd attractors, squirming in each seditious state. Every word mistaken, spat out in a bitterness that has nothing to do with taste.