method

Lately the words don’t like me. They arrive without a flicker, they set in without the feel. I rack them up again and again, despite being no better for the break. I no longer know who I’m writing to now that I no longer write to you. The same old dire mood, the same old used up man, insight all dried up and inspiration left in the middle of the night. It’s a fecund moon above this rain, and it drags me through the motions on my way down the drain. I sit and smoke as the lights go out, and I play my little tune.

The day fades and beauty visits in its bounty. The tree tops slowly turning into silhouettes, the varietal grays hanging off the clouds all brush strokes and puzzle pieces as the shadows become the street. The lights on down the street shining one lonesome window at a time, traffic in swerves and dashes shushing traction from the tarmac, the great reach of rain a deep breath behind the atmosphere. I scrape the scenery out of my eyes, stippling ersatz scribbles on the screen. There may be art, but there is always madness, the hard scrabble past the reflex into the burbling of the verbiage. This is how I greet the night.

I remember how the days stretched spread between our hands. I remember how the tongue tasted spent between breaths and kisses, the scattered phrases, the nearness of flesh. Somewhere some impulse to stot and soar beneath the umbrage of another cease and desist erupting from the soul diminished as the revelations swelled. Somewhere the machinery slipped a belt or gear, and the engine ain’t run right since. Another ending with the sun still gone. Another chapter on the cheap, the not nearly good enough transcribed word for word. The scene rife with lifted shtick and cartoon gizmos, the words run out as the night grows long. Smoke for the sky, rain for the staging.