rote

Gone are the days of rain and windowpanes, sleeping in after staying out, the insistent afternoon sun and the sunday newspaper. Gone is the tooth and touch of life's pull and strut, the bodies inhabited once by these hungry ghosts now gone back to the sea. Hands claps and heels click, the curtain call never lasts forever. The rooms empty, keeping their hands to themselves. The dismal moon set sail for another country, the shades are all drawn down.

There is no mystery. Life goes on until something stops it, then life starts up somewhere else. We are worlds slipping upon the skins of worlds, a drizzling of latent faith, a smattering of cheap applause. The starts and stops and gaps and continuities are all works of constant interpretation, pins placed at random on a featureless map. I missed you then as I miss you still, a longing that is part memory and part apology. A greed without redeeming features, a hole without hope of repair.

When the gray reaches come to ground, I ask after you. Your name sweetens the scar of my voice, speaking to the ice in the air. Your name binds the stars to my watch, this witness of clouds and weather. I reach again that sleepless hour, I speak again that weary word. The skies abide my indiscretions, the world continues sliding beneath my feet. The night keeps falling like a wishing star extinguished.

look

This soul is a thing of stone. This soul is the press of soil, it is the weight of a grave. It bears the rain and the cold, hidden beneath the roots in a forest or sitting in an open field tangled in the weeds. It does not guide the way, it does not part the waters. It is shaped by the gears of years, carved by the workings of the world around it. It keeps its secrets, sunken beneath the earth and mire. It keeps its place, while the world winnows away the chaff.

There are no secrets. There are no mysteries, no hidden reasons. Everything lurks out in the open, the blue prints all written on the architecture. The rituals all written in the wind. We linger on the precipice, trapped by our own limitations. We guess and plunder and accuse the world of duplicity. We ask after the timing of the tides, our lives the dance of sea and shore.

What light do you require? What faith will you find to sustain you through these cold hours and bitter truths? Life abides, life endures, life is the whole drift and draw. Our fingers trail through sand and water, grasping after something that can not be held or touched. We are legion and the burden of such dense assembly. We are the host and the battle field, the fecund farms and the wastelands where we gather all our gods and ghosts. The revelations await us like the reflections that mirrors afford. All you need to do is look.

smoke trinity

The hush takes on the color of every color extinguished, the bleary burned through gray cold fingers of fog. The sense of smoldering, the scratch of matches finding spark, the dense air leaning in so close. A few distant lights brushing at your flesh, the glint of embers buried in a sea of ash. The atmosphere thickens, like secrets slowing breath. All night long, this roaring silence.

The sun lights the dawn, the glow of distant fires curling at the edges of the sky. The day clings to the dense silhouettes of chimney smoke and the persistent reach of tree limbs. Flocks stir, rising like ghosts through the silty air. Wings whisk by, whispering mysteries that linger, ringing in the glittering gray. Even the slumbering earth seems ready to burn.

I want to feel you close as smoke, thieving kisses and stealing breath. I want to taste your salt and bitter, that curl of burning that always tastes of sacrifice. The clamber of flesh finding flesh, the subtle friction of the familiar. I want your warmth as it consumes me, your fire more than worth all future devoured. Wanting this darkness, longing for the light.

thanks

It was bound to happen. The things we said and the things we meant eventually would
intersect. The crossed stars that abide these collisions are never around when the check
arrives. The truth and consequence of the material overrun with the fierce remittance of
the ghost. Words all pile on and on, making mountains and digging deeper holes. The
words gather despite every mouth being full.

Some claim the grace of humility, some the grace of stone. Some speak as if the world
will listen. Some speak as if heaven was full. We thank the gods, we thank the room. We
thank the fields and the harvest. We thank the feedlot and the slaughter. Life is work
and ache and luck. It is too much wonder not to wallow.

Gather those you love in close. Gather your wits and keep an eye on all that might love you. We always toast the tomorrow that we think we want. Those bothersome blessings
served with a twist. The turn of fate and the turn of phrases, the senses fail and the
distinctions blur. Fortune is fickle with its favors, grace paces the floorboards searching for escape. Everything is temporary. Tomorrow calls no one by name.

torpor

The lights go out, save a few sparks crowded by spiders and moths. The air slows all around, each breath pressed tight against the last. It seems like there should be something to say, the moment so swept and furtive. That motion just beyond the silence. This mind not so much still as frozen by a thought that just eludes.

I take the winter as a given, thought the season is still shaking out as fall. The chill with each key stroke, that strange fire of freezing fingers bothering the alphabet. My beard and gloves worn longer and without pause. My eyes sifting through all these golds and grays. The ache of light just as it is loosed.

It is really all beyond me, the mundane to the extraordinary one unceasing shrug. The details all mingle, exchanging names and numbers. I don't even try to keep track of where I am in the story, let alone attempt to follow the plot. Just a sense of loss, a sense of error. Just a memory the color of ice.

finished

It isn't that I can't see it coming. It isn't as if I don't recognize the flag. You wave it until it is in tatters, a flash of color, the sound of rags snapping in the wind. You wave it as if signaling surrender while you spit and fume. I pause a moment as if in reflection. I slow while the words fly away. Crows scattered across the hush of dusk.

Night arrives on silken wings, the air cool and clean, stars sharpened on the reach of tree limbs. Chimney smoke crawls and clusters, catching naive lungs unprepared. The spun globe of chance always landing beneath the same heavy finger. The burden of freedom a creeping ache down the spine, a churning nausea in the belly. The questions are all painted the hue of the asking. The limits are legion.

Our mistakes brought us here. Our only virtues are found in how we carry these sins and errors. The telegraphed blows so antiquated, the brutal slurs so foolish. You ride this tide of rage and stupidity, a lemming if lemmings really could commit self-slaughter. You cry for blood and violence and some dumb host of angels that would see you through to victory. The world is boundless, full of breathless beauty and gibbering horror, and more mystery than any one lifetime could discover. The limits are real, and they are yours.

lifetime

I can not say how long I have waited. I was waiting before I even knew what waiting was, eyes cast towards the horizon, gazing at the sky. The day slip by, expanding into weeks and months and years. Decades spent like mad money, spent like the candle left burning or the moon wound down. It could have been mere moments, it could be this lifetime devoured by what never was. It could be that there are never words enough to say.

You are invisible here, that ghost that lingers, that scent in the air. Another light lost behind the hills, another star lost in the clouds. Each breath I shed is flavored with your name, each step I take chained to your absence. I speak out loud, as if you could hear me. I speak out loud, as if I wasn't alone. I lost my chance, hands stuffed in my pockets. I lost my way, waiting for a sign.

There is romance in the air, driven by tireless wings. There is romance in the air, gathering like smoke by the eaves. There are windows lit, there are fires burning. There is warmth to be gained away from the slow cold of this night. The skies are gray, the rain is waiting. Everything wishes to fall and fall. The rain waits somewhere above and beyond me, and, down among the mud and leaves, I am waiting too. I would say it seems like forever, but forever has no meaning to the very temporary. I would say something better, but the words are never here.