the number

You lay your head on the pillow to nothing but the whisper of pressed flesh and all those songs that drizzle from your lips. The long day finally all wore out, the razor's edge ground down. Your eyes shine bright, even though they are closed and heavy. You smile so sweet even though every little bit hurts. The bitter draught and the slow sustain. The sweet reminder and the gleaming coffee bean. Sleep loses its own self, dreaming after you.

So I scuffle amongst the dirt and dead leaves. So I slow towards the teeth of this precipice. The sky wanders wild, and the winds pause and gallop. Night and then another. Day and then the dusk. I am only conceit and twice-thieved hubris, waiting for the hammer to fall. I am only another one, wishing for nothing but you.

You sling yourself over those smoldering bones, you stroll like some dance of sacrifice. That soulful stride of your voice, rising to the tasks of grace and wonder. That distant gaze above the sway of hip and limb, eyes that hint of heaven. All those plentiful stars in swarms without number. All those tides and fires, sand and soot clinging to the salt in the air. You move as though standing so very still, singing with the bliss of where the bitter meets the sweet.

the moon and the stars

There is a pause to autumn, a moment when the whole world holds its breath. The jagged branches held so close to the throat of the sky, the collateral diffidence of falling leaves gathered in vague conspiracies. Breath clouds and steams, the crisp air a crystal witness to all this exhaust. Dreams huddle on the porch and sleep clings to the eaves of all these crowded little houses. Life, as always, exceeds its limits.

The stars are out far too early. The moon just looms there, scheming away above still streets and sudden urges. Shadows dissolve in the stretch of headlights, passing traffic through these plumes of night. A set of rapid footsteps, a one-sided conversation, ever stranger's voice mistaking me for home. Interrupted by abrupt constellations, stifled by the stillness that abides.

All the old aches come home. Small consolations crumble in the cold. Little left to follow, little left to find. Rooms that fill with troubled notions, windows clotted with light. Dusk seems a gentle traveler, gone off into the lonesome night. Dawn seems like a sentence for a crime I can't let go. Make peace with the senses, make this bed where sleep is lost. Remember everything is forgotten, everything lost beneath the moon and the stars.

natural order

All the geese I see are flying to the North. North north east, at least. This is with the change in the weather. The gray sleeting rain, the chill in the air. I know the view should be inverted. I know the course I ought to expect. I don't pretend at an explanation. I don't pretend that we know nearly enough to say.

Not to say I don't have theories-- we are human and have to tell our tales. The patch work of hearsay and heresy, things overheard as children, things we say or read. All the follow and the weaving, the way we sort all this sift and seem. I watch the sky flow gold and gray, watch the geese fly north and the crows go west. I listen to the misgivings of the atmosphere. I witness this little sliver of the world.

The cold has settled into the earth and air. Every day matter slows a little more. Ribbons of ache unfold and lavish the flesh with their affections. All the bones are sorted, all the wounds displayed. The lights come on a little earlier, and, when it falls, the night falls fast. I write it down, though nothing is ever really written. I write it down, even when the words won't take wing.

suspect

The story is an old one, crooked folk meeting on a crooked road. The long leisurely stroll towards the double helping of just desserts. The words traded, the whistles wet. Some bargain offered, blood for blood, step for step. The dance before it knows it is dancing. The ritual lived by riot or by rote. The shadows scattering all around the fire.

I don't claim to know the sense of anything. I don't pledge to know even what I might mean. Everything is the matter except the method. Everything is wrong but the feel. There is loss in each reckoning, there is some small fight towards each fail. It is there for the asking, and I never know what to ask.

I say I wore you like a fever. I say I met you in my dreams. I wouldn't believe a word. I would say consider the source. What could you claim that could be trusted? What could you say that could ever confess the truth? I know what is lost because I know what I am missing. I know where it goes because I wrote it all out. Suspect and grieving, I can only take the same.

the story that I told

The chill moves from the wind to my bones, ringing the blood from my knuckles, slowly killing the worn flesh of my hands. The rain spattered about the streets and hills, blotting out the blue of the sky, beating the leaves from the trees. Each joint feels the crush of rust, each muscle the teething of hungry fire. Time stitches together its apologies. Time catches up to every corpse.

The bitter portion is cut from these spent wishes. The hardest morsel the medallion cut from the world that never was. These elementary ambitions, the native expectations, the belief in love and exception all play out in grays and blues. This shambling exile, this spit flecked hermitage. The lonesome notion made worse by the resilience of dreams.

I wander the borders of winter, thick and dull and redolent of distant pleasures. Autumn strides across this town, trimming trees and spilling smoke. The skies fill with clouds and anxious flocks, the gutters fill with leaf and glass. It isn't only the years, it isn't only the miles. It isn't the certainty that is settling in that I am well into the epilogue, empty and bent towards the abyss. It is the resonance of want, worn through the reach and pitch of being. The story that I told myself, somehow missing from the world.

walking in circles

Again I wake up scratching at shadows. Again I wake up sweeping these bones to the floor. Sunlight, lamp light, the shine of remembered eyes. Vision submits to the walls of the world. Brick work and bandwidth, the plodding exclamations of matter, the fluttering ministrations of the dusk. The crawling crush of evening traffic, the return of every crow to its roost.

It isn't the words that have failed me. It isn't the world that has lost its way. The days are laid out, one by one. You take their make, you take their measure, you use what you can and leave all the rest. There's no-one to blame for all my mistaken leanings. There's nothing to do but move along.

I watch the hills, I watch the sky. I wait for the weather to make a change. The wind rises as the pressure remits, that steady tide of atmosphere plummeting over every skin. Never mind this sea of strangers. Never mind the need to speak. I follow each step, the worn down path of each spent yesterday. Walking in circles, favoring fevers.

another round

It is proof enough that I never pick up all the pieces. It is point enough that I don't care enough to act it out. The shows slip past, the music flows like smoke. The mind wanders towards the lowest portions, where habit has worn a trail like hoof and heel. The mind can't remember, so it learns to pretend to itself. That better nature bent from second guesses. Those better angels only certain to make themselves scarce.

A smaller number falling slowly, another picture hanged from that misused nail. That melancholia that comes from once believing you were supposed to be happy. The drift of sentiment sunken and entrenched, a feast set before us, wreaths upon the door. It is a kind of disbelief, to be so wrong so often. It is the consolation of this rushing tomorrow and another round on the house. I wait for some calm superstition, then find another day left in me.

I find some comfort in blunt appetite. The familiar and the beautiful, the reach and all the rest. Without these mementos I could feast and feast. To the day, to the future, until the boiling of the oceans and the burning of the sky. The uxorious attention to every favor, the blank exception offered to every fault. Instead, I mind the time and keep the date. I mistake ritual for virtue and draw down peal after peal of dumb ruin.