all souls

Stones take flight and the stars go home to roost. The whispers of unseen wings ride the fickle winds. The sidewalk rings with footfalls, the rustle of awkward costume mingling with the leaves in the gutter. A plastic bag haunts a chain-link fence and the cat is on the roof again. Every hallowed height has its fall.

The bell rings and each home claims its own. Windows battened down and doors shut tight. Pictures crowd the walls and shelves, all these cherished kin and other selves gathering dust. The earth doesn't distinguish between burial and bed, root and worm working their way through the blind insistent soil. Monkey up a tree, monkey finds a mask. Climb high enough, you're sure to show some tail.

Is it ever enough to remember? Is it ever enough to speak all those dates and names? The only life left them in our memories, our hobbled hearts beating hard and quick. The only choices left them only in our imaginings. They shuffle door to door, strange and hungry, wandering between worlds. They clamber through the shadows, only looking for a light.

apostle

Dusk comes and we slip off the edge of the world, sliding into the press of shadows, falling into the crush of night. All the bodies clinging to their particulars, model and mode meet at the intersections. Sweat and pine resin, the bitter draught and the sheen of dusk. The dreams all pool up as light makes its changes, the held breath, the missed drift. The passage all that we may abide.

The bird sweeps the wind, wings being all about the spread. The dog bites each bit, every morsel meant as marrow and bone. Every molecule is in contention, every atom endures these clipped confessions. Matter is at its most exacting when its cost comes due. The rendering by heat and compression. The gossip that the material world whispers about changing states. The glamor of all this collapse and resistance, the glory of the word nearly left upon a still and reverent tongue. We pay in mystery and kind.

Stand still to great the sun. Hold course to meet the evening star. The permutations of flesh and hunger, the teetering glimpse of each open intersection as it slides into the shimmering mirror. We wait in the stammering starlight. We pause before the wash of dawn. We reach and strain, grasp and falter, this changing that is our place in the world.

all the signs

The night stands up to stretch its legs, while the day is balled up to the west. Wings retreat into dreams and silhouette. All the words curls up like smoke. Stare towards all that the day still owes, stare towards the rising tide of night, eyes sparkling like wet rocks. What more proof do they need? Why keep asking when all the signs are there?

The stones spin and the sparks fly. Objects in motion tending towards their given state. The blue mood pooled on the floor by my feet. The artificial light painting stories on the walls. Dust marches on, the endless procession of the rejected and the ground down. Dust marches on, a flicker of shine caught in the edge of my eye. The percentages played upon the forces in contention, the game plays on and on.

The night will bend, the day will break. The glow long ago worn off the skin of this romance, light hangs on the vine, light perches on the wire. If you hear me, it is an accident. If you hear me, it is a mistake. Some stranger slung over my shoulders, some story spirited up from scrap and habit. When you listen you will hear the moon on the mend. The cat on its beat and the dog in its lament will sing. Listen as that light fills the sky, and set your story free.

incarnate

What little is left I give to the sky, slowly flowing from blue to black. What portion abides I offer the day, just as the night encroaches. I skip the details and submerge into the drift. Ants clambering towards the sunlight, fence to vine to peach to pine. Birds embracing the sky, enduring their return to the earth.

If this is beauty, it is the very measure. If this is truth, it is the certain word. You touch at such a great distance. We feel so faraway, pressed against these tethered depths. You teach that chestnut of all things ending, that limit is the one unbound power loosed. You are the turn in the phrase, the split in the road. You are the reach of our knowing abiding loss.

Tell me again to favor the spark. Tell me again to shed this flesh. This sea of ache and rot and woe abandoned to an eternity of love and ghosts. The confluence of the moment and the meat, all philosophy grown entirely from suffering and soil. The tongue pauses between all this dull wonder. The words that thread between these breaths always a little exhausted. The prayers that left us burning brightly into dusk.

all over all over again

There aren't enough arms to comfort, there aren't enough wings to escape the day. The money's long gone, and the fire is burning low. There are no rules to attract, no hole to fear or console. I say your name out loud, like you could hear me. I say your name out loud, like you would ever listen at all.

There are too many pains to pray on, too many days to count. My voice is tattered and riddled with spiders and smoke. I hesitate before I speak, and never sing at all. All the paper cuts and precepts are either in the mail or in the wind. I do not so much disappear as reiterate. I offer up the feeling of love, never contending that I ever knew its meaning.

So much for your unfettered heart. So much for these scratchy valentines. There is the word that never settles, the kiss that won't come home. The empty yard and the street filled with eyes. Night comes as if it was bidden. Night comes as if it was my due. Again I write these letters, asking you for what little there might be. Again I write these letters, wishing you'd come home.

tales we tell

From one world to the next, the stories are all the same. The ladder always runs in both directions. The spell always breaks like the wings of brittle birds. Climb as high, fall as far, sink so fast. Every choice is the closing of a thousand doors. Every road is its only hope.

Stars fall and wishes run their course. Odysseus comes home and Faust repents. The Devil loses every bet with God just like every other chump. Skip your ropes or stones. Brush your teeth and say your prayers. All the pieces were set before there ever was a game. Tell it the way you heard, make up something new, the story will hold its own.

What of the time, what of the ends, what of the ways and the means? The cream rises, the stone sinks. The prodigal feasts upon that fatted calf. The dish and spoon make their usual arrangements. One thing, then another. The plodding, then the epiphany. These strings of incantations. These tales we tell while the clock runs down.

faraway

I wear slow holes in the air around me, the ache of my gaze, the sieve of my breath. Time dries along these static clasps and worn wires, sharp spikes of color tinting the very air. The bones sigh and resign themselves to these days of sullen tasks and vacant labor. A shift upon some guessed at axis, the world unfurls, all tattered and torn.

I stagger back to familiar defects, the pitch and sway of ill will and bad judgement the sea beneath my stride. The tide runs high, the tide bows down. These moods that chase the tail of the moon. Each tree holds both crown and halo, root and reach the only law. Some hunger, some wonder. The leavings of the streetlight, the reticence of the wall.

The uncertain air wears me like ragged armor, the hesitation of a beating heart, the constant plunder found in flesh. The wind spills and dashes, hunting the ghost of inertia. Everything so faraway, clinging to the skin of another story. Everything so split and withered, omelets measured in all those broken eggs. I am close, or growing closer. The clock wound crisp and cold.

lousy with stars

Are those the lights of distant fire, burning somewhere between hill and cloud, driving pinholes through the night? Are those the bounds of distant constellations, shine written in point and line, stories spread like breadcrumbs across the void of heaven? Rhyme spoken and rhyme spat, breath given up to the slipped insistence of the road of choice. Those glittering eyes fixed upon some shabby stranger, life passing between the hubris of scattered home and town. The night open and bleeding out all over.

I did not ever carry the flame, only preserved the fire now and again. The clockwork never spoke to me, and my eyes never could see the green. I tend the embers, stir the ashes, as I am flailed by soot and smoke. The wind shivers through the tall pines, these towers of reach and longing swaying in the starlight. I gather the wood and draw the water. I live only through these blood-oaths and origin sins. Hand-outs and left-overs. The sky is silent and lousy with stars.

I ask without questions, want without an end. The rigid press of hope passes through me, another hungry ghost wailing on the highway. I pass these fields and forts, attended only by mutts and strays. The gutters hush and the leaves stall before they all skitter and dance. An owl slides by between tree and sky, the street coursing with wind and shadow. The day awaits us, in all its grace and fury. I watch my step and limp along. Somewhere between these acts and words, the day awaits.

the observable world

The fevered flesh dissolves these favored faiths, all the imagined kingdoms, all the faraway lands. The bitter dose of blood and dust, footprints left in the cool ash and pliant stone. The forgone conclusion of all these fairy stories, the holy ghosts and the heaven sent. Tell the earth all of your sorrows. Tell the sky all your joys. Have a beverage, bring a pillow. It is the comfort of the journey that drives all these errors. It is the determination of the myth maker to have that final say.

I tire of your stories, tire of the endless pantomimes. The weary reiterations of whatever ghost story makes your hearts hum, the bizarre torture apparatuses and strange consolation prizes of whatever hidden king you favor. The sorry palliatives based on mystery, the attachment of purpose to each personal tragedy. Your god culpable in every murder, your god instrumental in every broken child. You have nothing worth claiming, no thought that will make the world one bit better. Just hellfire and sanctimony. Just a book full of reasons that make no sense.

I pace across these memories and graves, the pain of the loss a little dulled by time, but teeth and claws still utile sharp and Nature red. The scars of the heart stitch slow and leave seams that ache and harrow. The joys of the world and its sorrows are of this world. Anything else empties life of any meaning it might accumulate. Anything else is an affront to all our loss and pain. I live here in the observable world. Keep your heaven to yourself.

tranquilo

We never worry when the world goes off. The twilight fascinations and the exponential expansion of the imagined. Fairy wings bring bloody appetites to mingle with our skin. All the stars just sparks and embers, the breadth of longings lost to absence and smoke. All these dreams blended fresh from these endless fevers of want and misunderstanding. The lights go low and every haunted morsel of our minds run wild.

Another thought runs a crease across my brow. Another sentiment is weathered into my face. I grind pine needles beneath my feet, the subtle crush of fall running through my every step. I bow slightly before the press of pine boughs, crowned by star and limb. The dogs cavort as an airplane passes. The smoke pauses for a moment, then rises out of sight.

We huddle and we wander, finding fire, trailing smoke. We dream with-in this vivid skin, we paint our pictures upon the surface tensions of our unraveled senses. The way revealed painted by our every long and lack. Soup to nuts the certain is only found in the dim reaches of small circles. Follow the glimmer of the farther fire or learn the secrets huddled on the edge of the night. Our history spelled out in breath and stride. The burden of the road traveled, the sweetness of the road to go.

the inevitable

The course changes even before the choice is made, probability greased with thought becoming possibility, the unseen path opens and closes as if by whim. One outcome exchanged with another, the teeth that rend the flesh exchanged for brambles or barbed wire. The weight of some imagined terror always pushing the mind around. The ache of some remembered wrong only another ghost trying hard to hide the world. I don't know from tomorrow, my thoughts chasing after the calendar and the blade.

The radio won't sing the song you need. The singer won't take your requests. Your name is still chained vaguely around your neck, an anchor for another object that doesn't quite get the drift. Clouds stretch and sigh, pausing to cast a shadow, slowing to shed some rain. The sun is warm in bites and swallows, groping at whatever flesh it finds. There isn't better due upon the horizon. There isn't a reason any better than a rhyme.

I stay my hand again and again. I know that these feelings are not your fault. I know that these thieves and strangers have their own roads to work, their own worlds to lie for. I neither confess or pretend. A song wanders by, a glaring remainder of childhood notions creeping in its wake. Those breathless moments, puzzling out lyric and melody in the hushed comfort of a temporary truce. Safety and certainty cargo cults dropped by accident into that teeming jungle. I left too soon and stayed too long. One answer left that wants me, every question gone off the reservation. By default and definition, the inevitable wins again.

enchantment

How the light loves you, bathing in the richness of your bare skin, dancing towards the sky. How the day clings to you, the last to leave you to the swaddling shadow and the shuffling dust. Cloistered in blood and ritual you cast your steady spells. Burning just bright enough to catch the honest eye. Burning so deep creation wanders in your wake.

I long to kiss you, meat and bone. That feast of endurance, that famine that no gluttony can sate. You draw down these entanglements like rain from the sky. You wear the wants of others like slight stirrings in the weather. I long to dwell in the moment that you manifest, long to change everything by the sheer intent to remain. We climb, we crawl, we dwindle, we fade. This enchantment claims every morsel left.

It is a fiction, this obsession. It is a trick of emphasis, an adjustment of vision to the limitations of light. Proof always insists on exceeding the limits of the system. I watch the sky stretch into starlight. I watch the last wings of the day fold and scatter. You wander outside my limits, traveling past your bounds as you ripple through this breathless hungry world. I would gather you up, all ash and gravel. Despite your shine I would keep you close. Huddled in my limits, loved like a stone dragged mercilessly to the bottom of the sea.

the story that we started

What thorns there were bit at the flesh there was. What stones there were found their way under heel and toe. The ache flowed from tendon to muscle, anchoring flesh to bone and this wailing to the world. The fields overgrown, the tall grass gone to seed. The frenzied music of feeding birds, their wings rending the wind like paper. The days sailed by, slipping through our fingers. Life slithered on, sliding out of reach.

Rainy nights and tiny rooms, thunder humming in the cheap window glass. Candlelight casting shadows against the ceiling and the walls. The nights clung, the days cantered along. Tomorrow seemed so bright and fertile and a thousand years away, a tomorrow that seemed as if it would never come. For awhile, it never did.

Words tangle as we spit them out, greasy syllables dribbled from oily tongues. The story that we started with outgrows us, changing stripe and feather. No-one says anything for a very long time, and suddenly everyone is talking. Silence slides by, and everything is different except for all the things. The story moves on, leaving some and leading others. The story moves on, without waiting for the words.

quintessential

I dissolve slowly as the day blows through, trailing snips and snails in these gales of sweat and ash. Clues left where no-one is looking, crumbs dropped despite being well out of the woods. The sky lulls as the flocks assemble. The shadows tremble as the dogs kick up the dust.

The afternoon is given away to these sparks and incongruities. The dull lament of the earth aching for rain, the languid fervor of language, raw and glistening upon the shell. Detail always the known devil, that slip of choice weaving through the dark. The ground swells with muted potential, the slow press of life enduring. New rivers adrift upon the desert of all that ever was.

I leave no stone, no flag, no spark. I leave no story but waves of trash and indolence. The wind wicks away flecks and traces, my history just flesh entombed in this crawling wake, my legacy only the sifting of matter as it shrugs it shoulders. Mass moved and mass held, the strictures of essence mostly a fairy tale played out. Ever after always exceeding the once upon a time. My grave vast and open, growing day by day. My name relinquished to the syllabary of the wandering sky.

that icy smile

It slows us all from time to time, that smile too cool with teeth. The spies stand pole still on the skin, electric rumors everywhere. Beauty so clear and resolute that all that is left is given. The trust that is the main part wonder, every feel all brush and linger. The seduction that ends up merely mostly ploy. The clinging tingling that almost always ends up wrong.

There is that fact of attraction, that solid crush of ache and appetite that sways and pulls upon every sense. Reason is sublimated into coarse service, finding the way through the maze of these inert tongues, blazing the trail of words to follow. Holding hands with these frantic needs and this fallow heart, following these faint leavings deeper into the dark. These holes always have their say, want and lack synonymous inside this slavering flesh.

I forget myself, assaulted by the thrall of beauty. The lights are on but no-one is working the door. All the years and the wounds, all the curses and the spells. The savagery always waiting in the wings, the spattered evidence always next to manifest. The absence of hope or promise or anything even resembling a virtue. The wonder of it all fills the eyes until there is nothing left to see. Eyes clouded with salt and ash, that icy smile feasts in leisure, making meals from each mistake.

capricho

It is always hung upon these whims, the vagaries of this nearest faraway star and the chance reactions of the atmosphere. Tethered to the weather, plodding along with the drift of wind and cloud. The day is bright, the day is gray, the day is doomed to be reborn in the crackling shells of its just shed selves. The sun presses its dry lips against my fresh dead flesh, making no distinction between blessing or curse.

This mood then flits, limb to limb, tree to tree. It searches for a position to fix, searches for some thing to wear as battle standard or thorny crown. Swaddling gray or blade's edge blue the feeling will find its fit. Whether wonder or blunt transgression, whether beauty or beast, this heart clots with thieved alibi and stolen hope. Calm always coming before some green change or yellow bolt. Balance always the sign post of some impending fall.

I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know what to make of the day. Each slip of perception, each glazing of stray inkling might wind-up my pole star. What I find might be anything save the way. I feel the bones knitting and the bile as it rises. I feel the sway of green fleetings and brown endurance flow between the boundaries of blood and brain. The warm kiss of sunlight already changing the nature of my skin. The warm kiss of sunlight reminds and remains, the story following another star entirely.

pass me by

So much for torches being carried. So much for flames that linger and endure. The world burns on and on, still searing from the weight of creation. Molten iron that steams and spews, the passionate irradiation of the immeasurable depths. Not a spark, not an ember follows this road. The only romance left here is that of distance, that certain staggered sweetness of the dissolute.

Never mind the less travelled road. Never mind all the differences-- intended and accidental. I left the trail so long ago that lost itself was left behind. Enthusiasm gets the better of intention for the poorly shaped and partly formed every time. All these stormy romances blown over, leaving hardly cloud or trickle. The habit of loneliness becomes the way, each misstep still leading somewhere. There were maps. There were signs. You get to wear the path that's left you.

A humming bird whirred between the ragged bottle brush bush and the tall scrub pine, fomenting its typical discontent. A teenaged crow baby talks a parent, trying hard to be that squeakiest of wheels. The sky is flat and blue and bereft. I read beneath the pine, slow and dull and spattered with dust and the hair of riotous dogs. Some small fiction meant to pass the time. Some story meant to distract and misdirect. The magic still happens. It is nobody's fault but my own if it happens to pass me by.

that faraway shine

Lately I imagine those first near whispers of light as they brush so very nearly a kiss across your waking skin. The line after line that push through the blinds, awaiting just the right words as they ladder down flesh and floor. Rows of teeth or pickets in a fence. I treat the dawn like the run-off from your wakeful naked stretching the world alive. So I move from dream to day, and from day to wishing once again.

The stars are strung up high tonight, and the moon so far from home. The ache of autumn reaching, the bare limbs cracking the firmament with silhouettes so heavy they nearly breaking the air above. To hang the dusk upon you and watch the shadows repeat you shape. To bathe you in darkness and moonlight, all eyes wide open and hands I can't keep still. The bitter distance heaven always holds you to.

It does no good to dream. It serves no end to live so enamored of a bitter past. I am the pain boiled down from these bones, the press upon press of all this flesh and age. You cast a long shadow, and I gather at either side of the day. Your shadow falls from that faraway shine, your essence burning a hole through every night.

ready or not

I wake to that sinking feeling, the weight of the world all around me. Swaddled in rope and chain, buried beneath the fitful waves, always just breaking the skin of the sea. That breathless moment when identity closes in, all those words and names battering my flesh. All the claims made and debts owed and wounds that never heal. The ties and binds that drag the living along, whether we are ready or not.

The weather pulls a quick one, the afternoon is dowsed by fickle showers. The usual suspects have their suspicions aroused, all the comforts of closed doors and muddy boots ensue. Little bird conspire in the old bottle brush, raising a ruckus until a scrub jay settles on the line above them. From riot to silence, it happens just like that. Everything always changing, just like always. The silt gray sky weeping just a little, like no-one would notice.

There were sounds and there were colors. There were people and animals, insects and trees. There was stillness and motion, light and then shadows at last. The hours changed each our, the day diminished into yet another night. I walk through this world, out of my depths, out of my league. I trudge along the tensile embrace of each place and moment, always almost ready. Maybe tomorrow, goes the litany. Maybe another day.

bad habits and small rooms

Night clings to the walkways and the windows, headlights sweep the streets. The odd wandering excitement of children sounds sharp and high above the lit-up houses and the ragged yards. The trees settle into their evening breathing even as each leaf is leaving. The moon waxes on and on.

I stand near the quiet thudding of moths on the wrong mission, these fierce collisions of will and wing beating out their absent brains and dusty scales. My eyes are dull and always hungry. I watch the street, I watch the sky. I watch the slow burn of my ill temper paint everything I see. I mouth thorny expletives as if they were prayers. I am useless and unmoved.

My flesh is burned and my limbs are electric, feeling every bit like ending every fight. My beard is a grizzled tangle, itching away at my slab of a face. I can not help but think in blades and clubs, in bones and arteries and wicked needs. Every third person I see seems owed a thorough beating. And so again, I retreat to small rooms and bad habits. And so again, a day open to the world makes a hermit of me before the sun is snuffed.

of song and sand

In truth I had hoped that I would be that song, bright in your memory, woven into your thoughts. That melody that endures despite every year and mile. That tune that returns, not so much from the mind alone, but from the lonely wandering road of the heart. I know that this was just a sentiment to spend on falling stars. In truth, there was no music to me.

Yesterday I watched as the rain swept the streets. Today I saw crows sweep black wings across a sky so clear and blue. Even the still and the stolid never stop moving. Each day the roads open wide, each moment the world wanders wild. Streaks of stars and sparks of lives. Even things that are unchanging do not stay the same.

There was the shine of your eyes capturing the moonlight. There was the music of your laughter caught above the sound of the sea. Our footsteps swallowed by the tide. The path we wore through the nights and seasons. Our journey marked only by salt and sand. I was never a song, never a promise, never a prayer. The world we wandered together gone, the wanderers lost past thought and time. The truth of my hopes all hollow, your heart another city buried in the desert.

things and places

You wake to rain, you wake to blue skies. You wake to spring only to wake to winter the very next day. Wheels spin with-in wheels. The story runs down and is born again, only with different words and details. The day breaks away from the brittle edge of a dream, and you are there, among all the things and places. You are there, again in the world.

It is the same hands, enmeshed in their tasks and deceptions. It is the same face, plus or minus pain or pleasure or all those years. You shift in your skin, a tide of lapse and hunger creeping inside your flesh. You slow to the hum of these familiar leanings, the creature that clings to the other side of all those mirrors somehow loosed into your life. You chat and banter with all these strangers who claim to know you well.

Day to day you note the difference. A spilled coffee, a skipped meal. Some meeting that runs on and on. Some mistake you know you will be blamed for. A flower by the freeway, a bird on the line. Here you are, as the season slips away. Here you are, alive in this fading light. You sleep, knowing the course of unseen stars. You sleep, knowing the difference in your dreams.

missed

The rain falls and yet you still hold the sky somehow. Less than the silhouette crows or the seething gray. Less than the hint of a whisper. The rain falls and the street speaks your name aloud. The streets fill and somehow your silence soars.

There is that threat of thunder in the spark of your eyes. There is that utter calm granted by your gaze. The day sweeps and gushes, the world painted in an autumn palette. You declare yourself forever in the tilt of leaf and the dance of gutters. Blue veins and red bones, eyes like forever and a smile whetted on the moon. The dull trace of speeding traffic, the slow retort of a storm about to bloom.

A flower sulks in a dark window, bending before open blinds. A bird drinks from the dripping eaves. Feet fall in step with the deepening pulse of rain meeting street. A song silks between drops, from the circled impact to the jeweled rejects of heaven. All eyes follow the spilling skies, sight spattered in these cast off strings. I look towards the passing storm, feeling as if I just missed.

damnation

They tell me I will burn forever. I ask them a question, they tell me no, not like a star. Their reasons are ambiguous, their physics preposterous. They tell me they have lives everlasting. They say they share in the kingdom and the glory. I say good luck with that. Happy endings are hard to come by, but endings are all but guaranteed.

I crossed the bridge long after the sun was gone. The murky dusk was spattered with droplets, the horizon streaked with rain. Traffic sped by beneath my feet as the dogs snuffled and panted. Headlights to taillights, bound to rivers of asphalt and ribbons of light. From fit to start, from soup to nuts, everyone heading somewhere hungry for home.

If I had hopes, I could not name them. If I had prayers, they would not rise. The sky was all but empty, heaven only held by clouds and crows. We do float upon lakes of fire. One day for certain the world will burn. I scuff the dust and scan the wide horizon. I sit and smoke and curse. The rain grows steady, the hour grows late. I earn damnation daily in a room so cool and dry.

extinguish

The rain falls, stirring clouds from the dust, spattering window and street. Mud or gutter, river or drizzle or deluge, it is always the same. The appetite cracked into the earth, the thirsty dirt making its claim. Some cities die of thirst, some cities drown beneath the tide. This town can barely bother to wash. Just the hush of rain spilling through an afternoon. Just the quiet shift in seasons.

I would put it in a letter if I had a correspondent. I would write it down in birds and dusk. Staring out the window, watching the traffic glide. The spatter off the eaves, the burbling of the gutters. A stray cat or a dog between engagements. Music as it trails a car heading somewhere else. Saying nothing is busy work. Words always arrive with strings attached.

The day is condensed, like soup or riddles. The language left over from another set of stories. The tongue that lingers over incantations, the stippled secrets of another world. I empty my hands and pockets, keys and matches and moments long thought lost. Light leaves its every incandescence. The lamp in the house, the candle in the window. Aglow for this slip of a moment, then extinguished despite every shine.

play, when pressed

Again I say the world is on fire, and my mouth is full of ashes. Again I say the day is done, with shadows stuck to my teeth. I grin that death's head grin, ragged teeth and eyes that are all but dead. I pass the exit, I pass the hat. There's nothing left to do but put the cherry on top and say please. The news never rests once it is loosed. A bullet freed always sounds the same.

I don't rest on my laurels, lacking medal, degree, or honor. I barely manage to sleep through the night. The sky bends to the changes in the season. The weather does its level best to entertain. These claims I make settle amongst the debris and deadfall. This name I carry could disappear without one notice or complaint.

My life is measured in slips and stitches. My story goes the way of dead ends and half clever feints. The notation steps up when there is nothing much to notice. When every thing of substance turns out to be smoke and shine, style is all that is left to take the lonesome lead. False stars and scarred hands, I take the measure of everything that isn't mine. I speak in skipped stones and bare flesh, chance and magic my every move. I speak aloud, though the hour is late and only the walls are left to listen.

pass

The day dies just like any other. Quiet for the most part, colorful around the edges. The wheels do seem to spin. Every new turn kicking up gravel. Every fresh circle another mad alarm. I do what little I do. I nearly did my part.

Yes I blew all these kisses. Yes again my claims went bust. The detail may shift and scramble, but the story stays the same. Must I stand atop this soap box? Must we go over this all again? I take a few steps and the years blur by. I take my time, just as good as blind.

The air is warm though the breeze seems cool. The night grows dark though everywhere are lights. I scrape a knuckle, I crack my skull, and all my flesh just peals away. The shadows seep and stick, everything burning and bright. I smell powder, I smell blood. The rough pavement whispers its good-byes. The day dies, and I just get up and walk away.