take

There in the grays of the season settling, there in the blues imbued dusk, the shape goes soft. Vision scratched and hindered, the roosting birds come home. All this splintered purpose spent over the long dull stretch of days, the years fraying the fabric until the wind blows clean through life. One thread, one blossom, one grain of sand. Every bit absolutely necessary, but the world is the story of getting by without. I’ve had about all the time I can stand.

spent portents

All these pages peppered
black with words,
trite poems and
weathered love letters,
strung instruments and
rosined draw,
only to say the dead
stay dead, and
all this lonesome
lives alone.

the hours until

The chainsaw blathers long past
sundown, the conspiracy to fell
all things lovely and true
drags on, slabs of laden gray
and drowned blues laid like
the law inside empty yard and
the dark keening street.
How do the days know,
they heap it on—
hue by hue,
blow by blow

the broken earth wailing
true names in long
chains, matter passing
states, beloved flesh
now cold clay decomposing
despite all we call and
crave, a return to
the warmth we never
hold dear enough,
passing the hours until
the past is the only
place left waiting.

American Songbook (My One and Only)

There’s no winning this one
whether they sing until
they’re out of lyrics, or
they stick to the melody,
somebody’s going to get hurt.

They were there when
the kiss turned real, when
the heart blooms past its
beating wings and
all at once the music
swells, you sing along.

Listen, the words don’t mean
it until they touch you.
The music isn’t there
until you are, the stylus
singing out the spin.

heap

Uncanny how the hands
always fold, as if at long last
conceding the point, yet
stay in play on the sly
side of this daily aggregation,
these sins that come tumbling,
crumbs on the lips,
salt for the soil. A vast
glut of plastic gutting
Ahab’s nemesis, our evil
the heap of debris and
the burned down world.
So I gather my attrition
wind the clock with
dull routine and tiny hopes,
closing the loop,
sealing circles, sitting
footloose, arms open wide.
The long talk and the big dreams
all come down to broken
cups and buried cans,
the depths of the earth
only stacked up
rocks and ruins.