game day

The world turns gray as the sky falls down, the river of rain churning the earth into something new. The dogs' legs are sleeved with mud, their coats flecked with beads of water. I flick a heavy head of ash off a dwindling cigar. It explodes into a startled cloud, a flock of motes floating on the air. The stray particulates dissipate, seeming almost startled that they do not amount to more. I spill smoke mingled with breath into the rain streaked sky. The smoke coils and rises. I am left alone with my boundless limits, watching the rain fall down.

I sit outside as the rain spills, smoking and reading. I sit in a plastic chair, the pages spattered with the drops and flecks caught up in the restless breeze. Tiny droplets stipple my scratched-up glasses, surface tension pasting circles onto my field of vision. The words I read sift through the busy babble of disturbance and detail as I bide my time. I swallow the bitter coffee as it cools. I watch the cloud smeared sky as it streaks and knots. I wait, and I watch, and the world goes on.


Later on it's football on the TV and the dogs on the couch. The gray of the day keeps crawling on and on, the hush and press of rain, the dull creep of shadows threaded through the day. The TV takes for granted my weaknesses and addictions, selling me fantasies of wealth and excitement. Phones and cars that would change me from the slab that I am into something shining with pride and lucre. Selling me someone else's dream as my bones ache and the rain continues. Selling me wishes as the storm gathers, leaving me with what is left of my life.

mood music

The mud creeps along the skins of thing, the gray rain and the spent dusk rattling around the eaves. The storm scratches at each little itch, it paints every surface with that unsettling suggestion that things are never the same. Bones ache and beauty burns, to nearly everything a season. Doors open and shut, unwanted gifts at a party with no surprises. The sun goes down and the lights go on. The sickness and the sadness settle down for the night.

The fires burn out and all the angels sink to some unknown depths, flight only an option while the wishes are fresh and granted. Time tools around the slick and rivered roads, splashing the sidewalks as the gutters flood. Soon all the wishes have come and gone, prayers of theft and swagger passed into the litany of things to regret. The hours all soak through the grieved for meanings and the words that just slipped out. Mentirosa slinks out of the speakers, crawling up through all these years and notions. Mood music always arriving with the wrong mood in mind.

Would that it was as simple as going to sleep. Would that it were a switch flipped, a flame extinguished. The gear-work just grinds and grinds, rusted and broken and clashing with disrepair. Bad blood and blown kisses, the tide keeps rising. Be still says that little steady voice. Everything passes. Stay put goes the chorus. Everything loved stays lost. The song changes, never mind the mood. A soft voice, like a dreamt for lover. A clear voice, strong and tender and on the right side of every fight. The song plays itself out, fading into the closed in corners and the empty shelves. Then the song is gone, and the only sound is rain.

what it was

Once you were that breathless beauty, radiant from some blinding fire deep below your skin. Once you were the Queen of Constellations, connecting all the dots. The sun rose just to see you, and the night held its breath the moment you were near. I see your brilliant smile in the moonlight dancing on the ocean. I feel you near me in dreams too close to real, hope all grown up and walking out among us. As if there weren't all those mountains and oceans and cities strewn between us. As if the wheel of time hadn't turned over and over again.

I'll never know why you chose me. I'll never know what you saw through those laughing eyes. But I wanted you the moment that I first saw you. I loved you as you burned me down to grease and ash. Those fleeting days and the spread wings of every night, the plot of discovery and betrayal playing out in blood and breath, the horror story haunting you nailed into my bones. A kiss returned at the door to the ocean, the spray of salt and that reaching heat, our flesh so warm beneath the cold count of so many stars.

It might as well be a bedtime story. It might as well start with a once upon a time. All these years and loves come and gone. The distance that begins at your window and runs to my door. The distance that starts at your difference and ends at my plodding heart. The bad boy I played at then worn into something I never thought I'd be. The good girl I fell for carrying more than her share of ache and lack. Our shared story dead and buried, only one of us ever knowing how it ends. Only one of us knowing what it was we lost.

until it falls

I drink my coffee from a grubby cup, sun and shadow all around me. The rollicking tow of emotion at rest for the moment, the cooing call of a nearby dove just enough of a marker to hold the world in place. The cat climbs the tree above me, his afternoon hunt always at least one level up. From tree limb to rooftop to the upper rail of the redwood fence he prowls his beat. The dogs and me, we keep our distance, down here in the dust and detritus.

There are clouds gathered to the north and west, the first visible conspiracies of a forecast storm, some little tincture of that prayed for rain. The skeletal fruit trees and the smug pines mostly only reveal the blue left overs of a bright and mild day. The winds have slowly begun to gather, slipped-by breezes rolling into something a bit more filled with force and fitful leanings. The pine tree creaks out its witness to physics, while faith cuts corners and gathers in the margins, ready to take all the credit. In the dry confines of this fence and foundation, I am willing to skip all the reasons.

Now the skies begin to darken, caught up in all these tides of gray. The air cools with its latest breath, like a lump of ice refused to swallow, chilling the flesh as it emanates. I can see my silhouette as I write this, all thumbs at the virtual keys. A mirror beneath all this mouthing off, a crown of pine and sky. The dog drives the cat up the fence, his attentions too wet and toothsome for the cat to endure. Every day a gift, it's always fair weather. The platitudes a starting point for such an inevitable end. All the proof pressed against my fingers. Every empty cup another story, every prophecy of rain just fables until it falls.

fail

Barelimbed trees and the gossip of crows, eyes grow old just looking. A sky bent into a flat and brittle blue, the air biting at any flesh it can find. The starved wolf of winter taking solace where it can. It isn't the sort of thing you tell in stories. It isn't the sort of picture you paint from life. Twig and leaf, stone and soil. It comes to you like a thought ambushing meditation. It comes to you like the memory of a dream. Scattered bits and missing pieces, and the clarity of detail that lets all the questions loose. Life is left where you lost it. Life is creeping out the box.

The dogs sort out their wars and kinship. They stare at the crow on the line, they watch the trees for rumors. Their heads loll back while they sample the wind, knowing things we will never even guess. Meanwhile the words all come up, blooming out of season. The words crawl along, whisper thin hungry lines until they gather and make the most of something that becomes their meal. They come as scout and swarm, pouring from each fissure, staying where they're put. They try awful hard, but seldom do what they are told.

In a way, you have to say it is a blessing. After all, what is left is all you get. The tired theatrics and the stormy romance all gifts in the any landing you can walk away from tradition. Listen as the water boils, listen as the bones knit. All the flattery that unhorsed you, all the prayers that set you teeth on edge. These flights and precipices. These post traumatic stressors fletched like found poems. The sticks and stones made into shaft and head, slings and arrows only outrageous now in their absence. Take all your toys and go home. Live to fail another day.

all the way home

I poke around these catacombs, the sad repetition of a troublesome thought, the ever echoing plainness of these depths. I pause in the autumnal hush before the boundaries of winter come crowding in. The mock gravity of the lingering mirror, the inevitable hell of some teen-age self. The silly pretension of my narrow despairs, so ardent and urgent and lost. The humdrum of hubris lived with day to day. The sacred precious vistas of some yearned for better way, always that longed for movie ending kiss.

Most of my artifice is at least in earnest. It may be tricks and quirks, but that is half the magic. I might be making much ado, but that is at last some craft. I skip the facts to tell the truth, wandering into these storybook woods. I make the path, by brick or breadcrumb. I might look to the distance, but my feet don't miss the ground. I lay my eyes to tempt and calm the clock. I miss a lot and still surprise.

The days wane, my attention wanders. I stare and stare into windows and through walls. All these ghosts of my best intentions. All those tombstones of spent intent. The ritual hi-light reel, full of breathless perfection and ruthless wisps of pure heartache. The sad depositions and the mindful pyrotechnics, the edge and end, the bridge of the song always such a steady blue. The night grows deep, all pretty pictures and bottomless skies. Never before have I been so lonesome. Never before have I stayed so long.

loving cup

The day arrives at the usual hour, eyes bright and hands empty. You retreat to that reserve best left to poems and dreams. As if you could throw away your shadow with your back pressed tight against the dawn. As if you could remove all the stitches and walk away new and clean. All the miles travelled, and you are still fresh and clean. All the wounds gathered, and you are still beautiful and unbowed. They call and claim, but never own you. I relive and remember, but I can never get the picture right.

Me, I am the same old puzzle in the scuffed box, missing pieces. Me, I am the same old candle burning out. My head is a failed circus, all clowns and animals and high-wire acts. My heart is the scorched earth of some dull apocalypse, all smolder and blackened bones. Once there was a war inside, but the war is long over. Now it is all veteran's clubs and weary stories of hope and futility, smoke still clinging to the barware, cigarettes never really going out. Wreck and ruin and the same old tunes. Loving Cup for Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree, Downtown Train for the White Cliffs of Dover. Even the nostalgia doesn't work, this husk so haunted, this day so long.

The sky is blue, the day is mild. Warm even for a California winter, the calendar doesn't know what to do with itself. The dogs roll on, all fits and starts, absorbing the sunlight, lolling in the dust. The cat walks the fence, watching for birds too foolish or brave to keep their distance. Time crawls on, insistent and resolute in its habits. All the lights are waiting for that one switch, that one allotment of momentum, that final direction off or on. You wander the far away limits, always aware, always listening. Always so near, reminding me of your absence. Always so close, reminding me of all that loss.