the worn road

The story before is the story you know, to know the storied hero of lunch box and action figure on the way to glory. To be so certain of the way words play. The evidence always imminent. The twist the point of all further evangelisms. The symbol the very paramount of what they said. I am a telling of ten thousand summers. I am a prophet of the coming wilderness. The weary cadence of the sad believer. The story certain it wants said again.

The story fresh upon the lips, more luscious in each telling. The break from looming consequence a giddy surrender. These dreams I have, these dreams I want. The insistence on the collar and all the corollaries. We lay the blame on these appetites, the bare direction of want, and the insistence on innocence. The simple notion of your closeness. This sigh while I wait to sleep.

Again my heart is on the water, the starry seas of faraway. Again I want in sleepover light, the popcorn movie and your sovereign eminence. The waste and want of days lived against the common refrain. This swim upstream against the rush of command. Here at the ache of intersection, the returned gaze and I told you sos.

pornograph

A building wind gone wild and a tide of tree limbs, the moon walking tiptoe through the scattered leaves, this hour of long and lose. The heel of the season just come down, grinding at the bones. All your darling lovers littering the tenses. All the conversation left between you and the heaven help us moon. The years and the hour glowering down, and you linger for a moment in the taste of missing lips. Wanton wishing, and the shadows weighing down.

You again at the edge of fever. The imagined heat of remembered flesh, the long night of the deep lonesome. All these threadbare metaphors, this ten thousandth starry starry night. Words to press against the pleasures you possess. Common drugstore odysseys and the grave you’re digging. Breathless moments and blessings numbered and laid to rest.

I want you, but it’s way past lights out. You the very limbs of slow kindling, the deadly art of live wire. The heat the root of your incarnation, this light a glow from the tomb of the unknown star. Love letters and ritual incantations. The what to say and where to say it. My wishes all upon you, and all these words instead.

oh the wicked ways

Oh the wicked ways of syntax. Oh the devilish draw and drag of simple syllables. The strange pretexts that pick and choose us. The line of succession between the tenses. The dire pairings of intent.

I sigh deep, and I close the window. I smile sad and have a smoke. The light left on and the fan always running. My sentence runs on and on.

All the words to say I want you. This wishing you into all my dust and drear. The dingy pillows, the ashtray eyes. Just the words and the way I always go there. The way I want you and only have these words to show.

the words for all we know

Would that the words would leave. The stories untold passing on to another unteller. The burden of proof left to some other page. To live past visitation. To build a fire where the elder spirits don’t call. This empty unencumbered with the telling.

The words habituate the husk, stick to the edges of the form. They step fearless into speeding thoughts and try to wrest them from their direction. They cling tight to the feeling as the heart sings in rounds. They cling tight to the shine when they come claiming crown. They chat you up and bed you down, ghosts in the hard harbor of unnamed hungers. They tear you down and sell your soul for scrap.

The hour lingers and the words come round. They open all my drawers and call out my secrets. The stacked deck and wicked mantra in the mirror. The old taunts and broken oaths, the watcher out the window, the murder at the door. They toss my cell and scoff at the mess they make, 52 pick up with all my plans. I’ve got nothing, but they don’t stop. All the hard questions and told stories. Love letters only words for all we know.

where the flesh abides

This is way of the love of long partings. This is the place where the flesh abides. The brooding heat, the clinging ardor.Your scent in the air like the press of a kiss. A rush of blood, a sudden palpitation. This onslaught of wishes, a ring around the moon.

The street outside is fraught with its intrusions, the pitch of traffic, the ruckus of dogs. Every last salvo insists upon the room around. Present company and equity sweat. The love letter tethers of hearts and parts. The hard contrast between world and want.

The world is full of fitful attachments. The hush of the forest and the tilt of your head. The crush of blood rush appetites. Goodnight lines and the weight of your ritual bones. These shameless imaginings and the unreasonable demands of the flesh. This furtive worship, this lingering night.

under the see

At certain sounds I shut my eyes as if I was a place to hide. The nights go crazy, what with all the ambiance, rags, bones, and bottles. The whole contentious retinue and their penny ante capers. There’s never any peace inside, so I leave me in the dirt. Without me to kick around, there’s hardly a bother at all.

Deadened thoughts and lead lined senses. The claims of erasure never sufficient to stay the sentence. Every word a hole to fill, always with more words. The conundrum stumbles, the tongue trips and glides. Sort through the rubble, pick your favorite pieces. Scan the shelves and choose your weapon.

The noise a need when the need arises, the noise a mark on the map of the mind. The name gets further every day. Open your eyes and slip on this skin. Loose the words that burn. This vessel of the invisible. This curse of laden claims.

the romantics

I suppose we shall always live apart, me and my precious heart. It’s a lament I’ll lay down by the tide, a secret I shared while seeing you as I looked at the moon. Waiting and wanting and speaking aloud. A story about what my favorite story would be if these stories could come true. These various meditations on how it feels to always somehow miss the mark.

The shadows work where we’re not watching. They close the doors and dull details. Reveal depths and hidden vessels, rushing away from the citadel of the seen. The details all devils giving us away. Beware the tale you buy. Beware the blanks you are offered to fulfill.

The beat goes on until the party’s over or the power goes out. The back and forth of wish and want. The need to hear it said with no skimping on the beauty. The need to leave a mark for Cain to bear. The gray shores and endless tides littered with remainders. My life the story of only needing what was missed, the measure of the drift between these words of love and what they really mean.

home

The lights go on, the lights go off. I stop, back lit in the kitchen window, lingering in the refrigerator glow. There but for the angle of the camera. The plotted paths of the assumed observer. The aggregation of the algorithms. A conspicuous crowd of shadows.

Here in the dark I disambiguate voice by voice. The speaking out of turn to the speaking out of choice. A darkened room with the story going. A stir of words halting down the sentence. The breath given without a thought.

We perform the rituals of the visible. We hit our marks and play these parts. The ordinary willed into the world by repetition. The illusion of motion in the way we all hold still. A flickering screen, the world outside seething with need.

evergreen

It’s the sort of thing the eyes don’t see unless they’re told to. The subtle turn of the seasons pressed against the left coast lean. Brown hills stippled with scrub oak and kindling, the fires longing to see the ocean rolling down from the mountains. This long dry stretch awaiting the rains of winter, thirsty peaks bereft of snow, the Pacific busy learning new tricks. The clinging sea and the calamity line.

The rasping cough and the starry eyes. This shambles of loose portents. This prophecy of bird and bone. The witnesses testify and the words run wild. Myths and nihilistic appetites. The tyranny of the curve.

You watch the numbers adding up. You sound the call to arms. The world reduced to swamp and ashes. The faith in the falsifiable failing while they carefully weigh the liar’s part. All this talk of heaven as smoke reclaims the stars.

paramount

The challenge of the sky is keeping the story straight. We weaken the words we use as they learn to work us. All these syllables saying where to look. The same to tell you what you’re seeing. From the sky blue sky to starry night, the clarity obscures.

The challenge of the spell is getting the timing right. The wind up words, the clockwork will, the wiring built to bear the declaration. We are the easiest part of the enchantment. The meat made of dreaming aches to agree. Tick tock, soup stock, the light of the intersection. The giddy ghost always just around the corner. The magic just in time to talk you through it.

The challenge of the word is marathons by the mouthful. The only time it gets a breath is when its said. Depending on ears and fingers. Fighting endlessly against the drift of fleeting animals. Turning the world to ruin tripping off the tongue.

mailbox

Enough with the stolen moments, the tattered breath, the curtain call. Enough with the rising minor chords, the accordion’s creaks, the old drag and draw. Lest we peal out expletives and set the company to scatter. Lest the moment lived to avoid lets  loose its seething legions. The matter is always swapping spaces. The direction is always dissolution.

There’s pieces that aren’t in the inventory. There’s parts that won’t be coming back. That’s the nature of the ticket. That’s the story, as far as it goes. The entropy is systemic. Eventually every end is frayed.

This is the two step of the walking wounded. The tradecraft of our fading fortunes, the ephemeral mark of the falling star. Some old soul, turning in slowed circles. A flickering light in the early hours. The mailbox spilling over.

the drifts you get

 The clock comes on hard all at once, the inevitable chipping away drip drip dropping through the day, another hour due. The flagrant waste as the wheel kept spinning. The martinet of the moment hissying up a fit, clearing his throat and tapping on his wrist. The clock calling out for another round of usual suspects. The words stand, dull on the line up. Bored to tears as they hold their places, enough in the know to give nothing away.

The words come walking off the line up, every one of them free to go. The words go home with who they please. Both Babel and diaspora, Lot and salt. Every one of them a criminal, however they wear their capes. The collusion of the drifts you get. The wanton loss of motive.

Sitting here I’m really a bunch of wishes about kisses, and the things that go my way. The led glow and the ubiquitous sounds and aches. These fervent feelings somewhere deep down the language and made to fit the tongue. The press between the ghost and the signal, the glimmer and the gist. These words that find their purchase in my turn. This place, dissolved in your sentience. A longing long gone on.

sublimate

The dispatch barely happens, the days are strapped, the words loom in their dull husks. The dismal climb down into. The moment, the mood, the object, the being. This feint toward explanation while slipping incantations between algorithms, the blood always claiming its ways. The words that pause for a minute to meet your gaze before pressing themselves through your chest. They say, and you ring out bones to appetites. They linger, and it is so written.

The case by case accumulation, our daily breads and so we saids, the magic we have to spell out. They are letters in the margins. They are the marbling of the meat. You breathe and stretch and bow your body to its resonant surrender, the rationing of pleasure until you sing its praises. The letters it would have you write, the reckless procession of your need. The covenants you would pursue, wagering your every sin.

This is for the shape of your speech against the air. This is for the way you mouth the names. Your epitaph read aloud, the cards turned and stars fallen. A necklace of prayers to distract from affliction, a sip from the chalice to imbue this kiss, the spill of will and the fall into want. A spell whispered and the entity embraced. The ringing of the vessel, your skin covered with the night.

breath sacrament

Just once I wish it was the ocean. Just one time let it be the talk of the tide. The flecks of foam and the crashing waves. Our kisses warm, our faces wet. The sea sounding like thunder as we savored the day. It’s not a memory we share, at least not with both of us there.

In truth it is as much as story as it is an entanglement. A want cast in words and pictures. Descriptions of kisses. Lots of declared love. The things we say we say. The reckless draw of want, the ceaseless magic of wish. We make ourselves in saying things we take for truths.

Still, I say your name aloud in my shabby room. Piles of dusty books and knickknack idols witness the press of air, the sharp startle of my voice out loud. Your name, flashing before an aching gaze in sacramental breath, touching the all of you I adore. This tide of tumbled blood, this earthly invocation. These open hours, folding the ghost through rushing pronunciations, your incandescence on my breath. Even now, in this reading, your name aloud.

done undone

Again the light and its limits, again the words all but spurned. The waste of breath and ache, heart beating hard, staring at the ceiling. The day bent and broken, slumped in its chair, swimming in its suit. I stare at familiar fictions, no longer able to act out my own. The television drawls, the fan whirs. The coffee sits cooling in the cup.

The clenched shoulders of untempered angst, the grind of tooth and nose. The gears spin slow, the days flying by, the nights white knuckle rides. The sorrow overtakes the flesh. Each day it all slips away. Every night the play by play on the replay. Done, and undone.

The machine keeps plodding, a collector of enigma, a weaver of mystery. Generate the labyrinth when you run out of Minotaur to hunt. The seeder of need, the whisperer in the night, this vast somnambulance. The words eating away at the sentence. The words separating the wings from the song. The automatic operant, the vine writhing toward the sun. This drift, this drag.

the count

The clock burns low,  hours clambering down the walls. The tepid numerals, the salted shatter of the dial. The blue bright flame giving the need a name. The television stagger and the blue bias glow. The evergreen and the worn clean through.

I live the ache as evidence. I enter these pained passages into the record. The words scatter down the page. The cursor what little is left of this longing. Black moods and blood touched abstractions. I have to spell it out.

Night slips in whether you watch it or not. The absence weighing heavy as light leaves only its want. Life in considered stills. Life in gnashing doubts. All these feels and seems. Living without the means.

clout

The dumb blunt instrument staggers on, barely capable of motion and cognition. A creeping shadow and mindless doom, this hunch of nerve, this clench of breath. A burden on itself— never mind society. The legacy of causality, the  creature we become.

Hold fast to these meager treasures, hold tight as the sands slip away. Slow and fleeting, the plodding on of sea and stars. Time is nearly down for the count. Forget about the blow by blow. It will take everything left to stop the onslaught.

The fall isn’t a spoiler. It’s the only given you get. Then it’s the discipline to land what you throw, and the guts to take the hits you can’t slip. Bell rung, the lights a flicker, the adversary a stubborn blur. This is where it gets you, stumbling with the hard count sure to come. Clock cleaned of dreams and glad tomorrows, you stumble on just to make them show their work. The meat headed steady, straight for the fire.

road to go

The night has its measures. The stars have their stripes. The sky stirs, the wheel turns, the song gets another verse. The room is dark with smoke and motion. A life flickering against the blinds.

An arc of ache stretching over the horizon. The leaden  limbs, the struggling breath. The abstraction of a series of distresses. The fitful persistence of a fading light.

All the words I’ve pinned to the poster board. All the words I hung on the line. The climbing groan of clockwork. The crabbed hand in the margins. This dream dragged like chains. The burning brand in your darkest night, the web you walk into.

all these moons and stars

Play it sad and slow, let the words emerge in familiar phrasings, the light upon drawn curtains and the shadow up the stairs. Entrance each beat by the bar, open up the melody, and make the music pay. Such sweet repetition, the stitching that holds in all the names. Blessings and lessons and bittersweet longings, forever spilling from your heart. The wild grasping passions that leaves us bruised and low. The solemn ardor of love in spring. Dashed passions leavening crystal wits. All these moons and stars.

Like the story goes I got the message wrong. Like they always say it happens sometimes. It’s the turns I seem to take, whenever the mood lets loose. The same damn song drafting on the learning curve. I never make my point but I use up every last nerve. Distant darlings and stolen moments. The sudden crush of summer rain. This train is all but gone.

The close retort and the lonely sustain. The keys on the counter, the dog by the door. The light on low and the music swinging off the shadows. Someone missing someone, singing sharp and bright. So ordinary it is every story. So odd and lovely it is you and only you.

smoke

It starts, the first fire deep into the night, a spark held over from the fall. The folded smolder of this immolation. A breath of the incantation. This dose to dull and numb, to lull the very senses. Another rushed ignition. This ransomed incandescence. This poor translation from dream to being.

This is where the magic happens. This great drift unto dreaming. This urgent search, this misplaced word. Hidden in the temporary, blurred about the light. The fade into indistinction. The place where words won’t go.

I always burn the midnight oil. My candle lit at both ends. Some compulsion or mortal curse knowing just where to find me. Smudge my name from the awnings. Chase my memory from the eaves. At once again this burning. At once again some scant light.

empty set

The stars replaced with ceilings, the moon with some screen. I moved inside to to do my ailing, box up my affect and let the tears run loose. Now the sun is all but gone, and I have tagged along, fading into flesh and bone and isolation. Alone without the words, and now the night has come.

I am the waning moon, I am the empty set. Some string of words to trawl through the heart, some resonant fragment to express my lack. The words hold more, and so are less and less. Fungible and inconstant, while we mock the precision of the carcass. The flesh, bereft of our eloquence, contains our evidence. I am the path of steep declines. The mark of certain burden.

I am done beating the drum. There’s no gong for me to bang away on. No star I’ll follow, no flag I’ll fly. Still, the world will always be served. I’m one of millions all a stir from this kicked down hive. Less a choice than a direction. Less a leaf than the river run. Awake though only dreaming.

nullify

The soundtrack is there to tell you how you feel about what you’re seeing. If you don’t listen, who knows who you were. Sometimes you hum along, as if the tune isn’t you. Sometimes you let the others do all the singing. Eventually it all costs the same. Mostly you pay in little pieces. Sometimes you pay it all up front. As the moment leaves, you are mementos and souvenirs. Little gewgaws and brittle slivers. Dwindling images and memories by rote.

This is why the story lets you down. This is how the singing gets you sore. All these self help holies and layaway heavens. The rounds there for the turn, not the take home test. Eternity is full of a lot of not you. You only go as far as what you carry. No one saves your place.

I sit and listen to the sound of sprinklers, the scent of treated water caught on the wind. The room fraught with dust and scattered mammals. The porch light washing the night bleary and blind. The stir below just so much wan moonlight and cutout stars. Now just words spilling away from the turning. Now just the erasure left in the tense.

follow

The day burns down slow, awash in these low winds and atmospheric blues. A swell of wilted leaves, a shimmer in the greens, a flash of passing chrome. Overwrought about the head and heart, a pin point and a ripple, always following the arc of some story. Traffic stutters by, the music lays it on thick. The date you celebrate.

There in the heartbeats and breath by breaths, the draw onward to keep on sliding down the fire. How our eyes ache as we take in the empty, the measure of this twilight against the dream, these distances that are the measure of our days. Season late or season early. A word to butt in on everything everything under the sun. This breeze brushing the knees. The calendar reasons.

What am I but these same mismeasures? These past tenses and abridged regrets. Fragments flickering against unnamed actors. The slack and slander of flesh over time. The first suggested searches. I sit out as we all fall down. I sink with the spin, the naming and the nothing. I follow the rising night.