ecclusiastics

Oh to live out these weird oratories! Oh to leave the plum stone upon the board! Always abound upon some phenomenal hyphenation, this secret star, this savored hyperbole. Always interrupting with my mouth full the peace of the repast. Taken in by art and the lonesome dusk. This risen veil, this cat’s dash clarity when the moment comes to pounce. Cold skin and lost heart, the prayer and the salutation.

Some hunger, some drift of mission mouth. The wind bequeathed smoke and the breeze sotted breath. The bardo bending the bars of the vamp, a scatting around the scales. Reneged light and negative space, from bird wing to astronomy in the time it takes to turn the tide. Living in the grays and low throat growls of the spent rigors of romance, the empty an instant eminence right there in the chair by the bed. Boxed up letters and tattered souvenirs, from this constant inarticulation to the gravitas of dust. 

I rattled around the big box store, I raged upon the roads. I sang a song from long ago unless you reckon in memory or argue the motive of time. I spat expletives and called out to raptor and crow. Here is where the story takes its salt, somewhere between the afternoon and this prescient night. The altar shifted and the feast lambed it’s long ago, between oh yeahs and the preaching of the bass, the taken chance and this vestigial juvenilia. The night here and there, you and me and these enthusiasms that itch to take the wheel. 

smoke

The day slows as dusk drawls closer, the trees swaying in the breeze, the shadows filling in the streets. Waiting is about all left of me, eyes pressed soft against the scenery, noting the passing of car and crow. The cool air already replacing the daily repast of fever in the firmament, the thirsty flora droop and drowse, one thing then the other on repeat. The cigar I’m working at unspools in fumes and trickles, sending signals to the sky. Nothing gained and venture free, my temporary trails away after heaven’s heels. The sun hits its highlight reel as it ducks out without a word.

We stick to the script, we go with the story. The words pulled up still cool from the well, spilled as we trudge along the trail. The world only another word for human frippery, the world we mean typically more glib than globe. These prefabricated dreams that hold us to the proof of our promises, these words that stitch us tongue first to these wildfires our lies spread through every stick and stone. Ground down by time and toil, turned to ghost and soil through the grit and grease of it, I lose traction with our tribe as I am unspooled across the landscape of dust and dirt. Burning through the breathing, smudged across the stars.

The night swallowed us like it always does, first bit by bit then all at once. I sit and smoke and slowly turn to earth. The front step with its moths and spiders, Jupiter glinting from a tree limb silhouette, the sky abiding all my gossip and glares. I’ve let go of a few last graspings, the attachments to notions of seeing and being seen, like these longings left for lost lovers and restrangered friends and other worlds never to be seen again. It is a sad and lonely passing, this skin so ephemeral and dream tangled that I leave it here in this ersatz ink, these bones so heavy with resignation. I speak aloud and the breath leaves my body, all I’ve ever said or done the smoke of fires extinguished before I was born.

slow dance

I guess it’s time to face the music. Or maybe I should sit this one out. It’s hard to tell once you lose the road. It’s hard to tell, banging away in the wilderness. All these suns and moons spent foundering in the flowers. These years riddled with prayer and puzzle, emptied out to the sea and stars. These years wasted waving the flag, when everyone else knew surrender when they saw it. The dance doesn’t need to ask.

The heat up on its hind legs, the pillow soaked. A faint smell of soap and the stirring scent of old smoke. It is this cloister of shadow, the weight of wood and plaster pressed by the merciless sun into strip and swaddle. Hiding as the day goes to blazes, hiding as the music washes over, the infernal writhing of this worm split by spade and cooked on concrete. Low living for the lowlife all but forgot. A vestigial memory fleshed out from before holing up became  de rigueur, when the reason was more than the season.

Long past pretending I know the steps, past pretending that anyone asked. The drear days waiting for the ending, out beyond the draw of reminiscing, lost to the courtesy or the bother. The car doors lock and the windows whir closed. Beneath the plague actors and the brutish weather, far from the lovely or the good, maggots clamber through yesterday’s meaning. Outside the world burns while even the shade bakes away. It’s a slow dance, all this dying in dribs and drabs. It’s a slow dance, squirming to the reel of the damned.

train song

The point is that the paths will cross. The tracks stitched across the distance, smoke trailing the rails. The way the dreams trail us through our waking hours, the words buckle from the warmth of this lull upon your tongue. The way the song goes on from Tennessee Stud to Take the A Train, the burdens of the elders crossing each threshold and wilderness, voices raised above the din singing as we go again. Waiting for the bells and brights, the ruling of the cross arm coming down. Waiting for the words to warm up, the incantation all along. 

Maybe if it’s only bells and whistles. Maybe if it’s just the system showing off. Never the wings that sweep us away, but the tread scraped upon this sojourn of tarmac and shoe leather. The legions loosed from Babel’s crash reaching out from the impact of the thought, the way each tongue might turn an ankle around a corner, the summoning and the banishment by the route of the breath. Every word born by the bones choked down your throat, this song another knot in the blood, a clanging at the impending pass.

The roads ring out long before we follow. The way is always weighted to the words. Arrival and departure, the going and the gone. Song after song to coax the lungs along, the melody framed by the beating of the feet. This rising of the road to meet you, this clattering along the tracks, the piece of you that still goes singing when the world wants to move it along. What waits at the station, where they’re going, when they’re leaving. The sound when we see it coming, the wail when we know it’s gone. 

fuck ups

This is the day that got away. This is the room with the lights left off. Eyes open to these unsettled nothings, tiny sparks, fitful kisses. The dreams that drag on and on, in waking leaving only their absence. Ciphers written by spiders, shadows skittering across the ceiling. Come see, the stone turned over. Come see, the seal has broke. Rented rooms and open windows. Sleepless from listening for the footsteps up the stairs. Ready for the ending every time there’s another door.

This is the stranger there as you turn around. The mistake the moment I think I know. At the saying of your name, the tapping of your shoulder, wherever you go there you are. The ill crossed road, the silent star. It’s not you, it’s your proximity. It’s not you, it’s your facsimile. The curtains stir, altering the light. Something about a sky like so, something with a catchy tune. You awake from the dream again unwanted. The sound of a doorknob tested in the dark. Listening for the alarm.

We know it’s there though we don’t see it coming. We keep going though we know it’s overdue.   The bolt from the blue, the start from above, death from on high with the lowdown. The pause before the other shoe dropping, the stretch of wasted breath. Waiting to reveal the wrong as yet unknown, the failing that finds us everyday. The moon won’t come until the morning. Awake in a restless bed, weary of this droning on. 

identify

I don’t know what I was saving the words for. I don’t know what I thought I would say once they were spent. The summer burns in thoughts of autumn, dreams of fall begotten storms, imbued with the tongue of passion. We wait upon the precipice, fueling the future with our flesh. Again and again, this shift, this skin. Once, so again the name pressed against your lips. I never know what was worth saving. I never know when it’s time to go.

You can change the curtains to match the drapes. You can scrape off every sobriquet. Try and try and try as you might, the world won’t go your way. Turn and train, weigh the breath and read the room, betray the grave to gild your tomb. The rose keeps on rose-ing, whatever the bent or handle. You may pray and scatter petals, you may bow and reach. There’s always the sun walking its beat. There’s always the moon hitting its mark. 

It’s a shame that I can’t see it. It’s a shame the things I say. I forget to check my messages. I never answer to what they call me. They never call me by my name. There are maps and other papers. There are photos, there are flames. The swing of the wind, the sway of the earth. Your longing a moment in the margins, this absence a breath swept away by sudden wings. The worn coat covered in dust shrugged off at last. 

lest you linger

Before you know it you are braced before the last door left, shoulder hard to the bargain of your weary bones and your belabored back, the last wave fast upon you. So much for the life you led, so much for bellowed oaths and soft bellied prayer, so much for your fabled strength and storied winning streak. This is the onslaught and not friend or foe or unyielding god there  to offer up arms or fortitude your way. At once some teetering through the frame, a flicker from a star. Coming at you whatever direction you’re headed, destination or interception, this busted seal, this counting down the clock. At last the losing, that last moment of the mirror.

Call me where your wind runs down. Call me when the smoke no longer clears, the obduracy of oblivion with fire always fresh and lies all we know. We lay in the cut or stray in the weeds, watching walls crumble and words burn. Tired claims bleeding through the liminal, every turned stone a trick of the tongue in this hypnotized ubiquity. Wave after wave of gods washing in after the fact, hindsight as holy as it gets. Maybe you mangle oaths like that one-eyed such and such that did you dirty not so long ago. Maybe that is the sense you step to, dancing with the shoes that bring you, barefoot reeling around the fire in your mind. Working in the direction of the ruin.

Grayer and grimmer with the blazing down of days, bones a shimmer as they gossip and grind. The words just tumble as the sands jitter and fall, hands clapping and staggering blind, laughing and weeping as each bump comes harder. A discord of blood and grease, heart beating dervish dances, the breath heavy curtains jostled with indifference. Tripped and thumped and clouted, forgetting the particulars of each bruise and blow. Just the skies smudged brown and the tree all a tremble. Love loosed like a miner’s canary, a grievance sorely missed, a berserk horde seething with a rage past hatred held back by door and shoulder and spine. Missed kisses a litany flashing before your eyes and a fury in your grin, you leave the last door to its own devices and ready your every welcome. 

goner

It isn’t the faded flowers, the listing of the landscape, the letters left to dust. It isn’t the broken bones set wrong or the way the day has to break the bones of hope with nothing more than a slip of pale blue sky. It’s the taint of truth in each memory, the hindsight clarifying every smile and stammer. It’s the cruel tint to the lean of the language, each day waking to early to catch on late. The cherished moments damaged by the light they’ve landed in, forty years with the top of the charts singing in each wound. Fool-hearted and blindsided every time.

There’s no turning this tide, there’s no one coming back. The dark and the dawn, the stunned heavens and the forced concessions, the touch of yet another unseen sun. Wake to the depths of despair, dreams as unrelenting as the day, the grave untended and untold. The slow dissolve and the murmurs beneath the screen, the theater empties and the world has changed. Rain across a lonesome parking lot, parting together again and again, practice and play acting with the words left running.

I never had the numbers, it was never in the stars. Watching the parade pass in twos as the rain keeps coming. Watching the boats go sailing away waiting for my ship to come in. It’s just like the movies, things turn out one way or another. Most of the people we see we never see again, some exposition, some background talent. Not everyone makes it to the end, but it ends without waiting up for anyone. The lights left on, the lights turned off, the days come and go. I look at the clock, I look at the calendar. You’re not there either.