Tuesday, August 2, 2016

traction

Painted green in patience, the world skews vaguely towards the clock. The placment of the causeways, the reach of the flora. Each skin wears a countdown, each name earns a notch. Between arrivals and departues, we are our dispatch due. Glass and plastic, carpet and tarmac, every surface bears this wait. The sky is graced with clouds and planes. These abrupt disagreements with gravity.

I wait like all the others, in contention and dismay. The aches all settle in as the plans continually change. The words stack like cordwood, the words stack like bricks. The plane evades all prayers and numbers. The plane is a story that changes as it goes. My mumbling heart can ken its kin, even as the blood starts to burn.

It doesn't take too long for the tale to take. A few scattered words, a quick slip of the tongue, and all the crows have settled on their plates. We sidle past our purpose, we outlive our truth. The sky once so full of heaven now stippled with brittle light. Buoyancy built of vast engines and startled carbon, lift left to the bitter tills of our trampled hearts. Only left with this world so full of falling.

chiming of the vendors

It is there in the playing out of the song, in the fade of the light, in the knowing sway of the neighbor’s palm tree as it seems to pulse w...