retrospect

And just like that the year is over. And just like that the day is done. Forget all that burned away into heaven. Forget those that lie humbled beneath the stones. The stories disarticulated with tricks of tongue and steel. The stars that fall though no-one's wishing. I sit beneath the cusp of shadows, I wade deep as the tide of night comes in. The singer sticks hard to the standards so the songs will run and writhe. All the words come home covered in other voices. All the words that were never yours come home.

Smoke curls from the parting of my lips, steam from my cup steps in for a kiss. All these aches and hungers alive just to rattle around my lungs. All my letters written to another place and time. The target calls with all its heart to the arrow aimed at truth. Each loosed answer aimed at questions that never were, the words all scuffed and bent from use. Every question some ghost of a world that never was. The poem the burrowing and the earth. The flight and the way of wings.

Fall down the steps of the latest rage, leave the temple with the bones of ragged prayer. Spill from one riot into the wanting arms of another. You are all the reason there can be. The cracked cement and the broken glass. The draught of laughter drifting through clouds of electric light. The struck match and the bruised mouth of cheap enchantment all the halo you ever need. All my heart these furies and hungers, the world without time or worry. Another year so far from you, these words scribbled on a calendar. This song always threaded with these wishes as lonesome and as distant as the thought of a star in the long wandered winter night.