acumen

The day rings different when you lack the usual pings and ricochets— plans and family, children and partners, friends and good intentions. Sitting around, thoughts mitigated with flower and the right before you while the will unspools, catching up on a lifetime of origin myths and told you sos. The hot black coffee gone tepid from the low rotation, hands full of habits while the miracles miss the mark, the day is all shadows and sharps. We tend towards the directions of our talents or the tide of our tribes, either drifting downhill or tethered to a track. Those that lack a pack or any particular acumen caught up in the eddies and currents of chance and love. I watch as a neighbor family returns home after a walk. Engines roar, tires squeal, numbers crunched for every devil’s deal. I hit what I aim at, yet always miss my mark.

The circuits short, the signal drops, the machine is all sparks and parts. This is the world we live in. This is the way time made us, in it, not of it. We gather our forces, we pick our hills. Life is always trying, every stalk, every cell. The sky and earth a bounty of yes ands, dice rolls and localized probabilities, the reach and seethe and hunger and passion all at once. We take the shape of the sacrifice demanded, fill our cups with our daily kerosene, and get on with the burning. Never sure who’s pulling the strings, we are dragged through these petty etiquettes and this clumsy repartee. We serve the patter we serve the cycles we spin upon the axes of a pantheon of wheels and forces. Spun sugar before the cosmos, our cluttered sparks and spasms lapped from the beaters of the mystery. 

We burn brightly on our altars, we serve softly all our swarms. We are the needle spun, always aiming faithfully north. The blood and the bubbles, the wires and the work. Read us our riots by the light of our appetites, tell us to kill our kin for the whim of flag and crown, serve us to the stir to feed the fires of spin. The numbers run through my guts and kick the stuffing out through my seams, whittling away tomorrows and cutting off avenues of egress. Out here with Ozymandius as the catching up catches up. I took my chances, I clicked on the terms and conditions, the contract goes you only go once. We are stirred by the world turning, good to god or ghost depending on the givens. I take my portion off the top to turn it over into the rush of earth, a steady bell in a world all stir and strive.