confess

I am only fit to speak to my imagination, the world having long ago exceeded my grasp. The fleeting glimpse, the mournful distance, the depths to which all truths have fled. I slide across the shadow, that flicker of tooth all bite and smile. The absolute manifest in the contrasts. The definition complete only with its opposite intact. The blinders of language always painting me into corners, trapped by all I would confess.

I arrive at only distance dreamt having lived so still and so soft. The brush against dark branch the wheeling constellations, the smell of water clasped close to the sod. The whole night so certain and fluent, a chill against the skin, a breath slowly kissed. The languid complicity of the imagination, crippling more the nimble. The alacrity of numb limitation, the slow unraveling of insistent perception.

So this is why I dream so hard and poorly. This is why I am absent in the day and empty in the night. The side effect of a life lived loosely and beyond all means. The symptomatic loss gained through deep thinking around the edges of thought. Not the picture but the notion. Not the details but the gist. You as the least I could hope for. You as the limits of all I want.

shake

I scuff my measure along tile and carpet, this tread the soil beneath the field, the shuffle of the story plodding on in the dark. The crack of ice resounds down this idling spine, the work of the world entangled in cobweb and dust. Every step a shift and a continuity, all the proof of this wide open universe the stubbed toe and the bumped head. I search the wall with spread fingers, the desperate reach towards the salvation of the switch. I find the light and let it be.

I sleep close to disputed borders, dream and dissolution, mutterings beneath the breath. The clock and creation. The time and the tell. I stretch and turn, slipping in and out of this thin narrative, clotted shadow and the lingering insistence of cream. I fold the pillow, feel the crease and heat of this clipped connection. Hour to hour, I sink and wake. Hour to hour the reasons all come clean.

Somehow I have lost you, the dark windows, the locked box. Somehow I have exchanged you for these slips and tenders of tooth and tongue. The ache in my stride, the mottled flesh of time as it arrives, lit by memory. It struck just like a mystery, it plays out like a dream. Your eyes intent, your face swept by just the least breath of shadow. The heat of you against my kiss. No questions left. Only the lightning flash. Just the countdown calling out thunder.

certain

The ocean is only the beaded water on your skin, the sand just the pressed insistence of your thighs. The air is a rollick , drowned in spray and thunder. The day the glaze of greedy light upon your flesh. All these blessed definition awaken with you. All these flames and markers strewn without.

It is like the lie of constellations, irresistible once it is engaged. It is like that feeling of waking to the sun upon your face. The music that enchants and the day as it breaks. It is the collapse of perception that means the vision will persist. The line once crossed that erases the very meaning of retreat. This witness seems to begin the world, these reflections of your path.

I do not pretend to conceive the possibilities. I do not mistake all this wish and prejudice for the world. This way is adrift upon the open seas. Lost or fated, I cross off road and rail. This way is all I know. The hour slows and these longings wander. You are all the direction there can be.

what the light confides

From my front porch I see that the hills are burning. A burning crown and a flag of drowsy smoke. The sun so long ago swept away into the deepening east. It is a condition of the season here. Another dangerous sign particular to the time.

We cannot help but read into these things. We cannot help but to invent a bending towards our ends. We trade away an intensity of perception for a breadth of vision. We are the stubborn and pliant lenses of the language where we grew. The telescope and the dictionary. The documentary and the dream.

You can't help but blaze away in my thinking. You can't help but make the world in your wake. Mine just another of the ten thousand longings that cling to your skin. My huddled fantasies only proof of your shine. The weight of the world a measure of how quickly it burns out. We are only what the light confides.

dispossessed

It climbs through the cracks in the hours, hours breaking in waves and sparks. It creeps through the broken laughter of distant voices, falling from the trees and stars. It slips into your skin, mild as an idle shiver. Simple as goose-flesh from a breeze. It is all of your thinking when your thoughts grow wild. It is every empty sky and vacant lot untroubled by the dark.

We shift skins and walk with our bones on fire, inventions left scaling the flames that rise and rise. The soot we scatter and the dust we shed, foot steps trailing into the unseen night. Every breath feels a little fever, every guilty symptom a tear. Having walked so far from the fire that we have learned to live always alight. Having wandered long enough to feel it in the stars.

Speak this first, before shedding another breath. Speak this soft, before all restraint is lost. The sky is cluttered with all these threadbare constellations. The night is spread gentle and deep. This is the way of all wounds and treasures. This is the way of all theft and awkward truths. Say it to the brigand dawn or the traitor dusk. There is no place that is not home. This is where I am.

lassitude

The clotted feel of the sky is lifted at once, the sun goes out and everything is lit again. The pitch of the horizon line, the submerged clarity of the sky left above the sun. My blunted eyes see better at dusk, the change of palette favoring my limits, which I continue to accrue even as my abilities diminish. The day is in the details, the night knits from remainders. The continuity comes from the lingering indistinctions.

The day to come will bleed into the day just lost. Night nodding against the spheres in their orbits, the machinery grinds on. The shadows drain and deepen, the clockwork enmeshed in this cold stone and dizzy flesh. I follow the trails gouged by heel and hoof, the rails driven by ice and water. I follow the path of smoke and steam. I wear each skin I shed, I wear the mantle of a name filled with empty air.

Sweat beads and words flee, the room always so warm and vacant. I follow my fingers along these trails of keystrokes, picking letters by proximity. Every sentence finished ends feeling served. All meaning left is nestled in the margins. All the moments noticed bled and dried. Night and day, hollowed of their Porter phrasings. Night and day words left out to dry on the line.

remembered

The dusk comes, shining in the substance of your gaze. The sun sets, and in its passing leaves its essence in your flesh. It is the story stuck to the earth and sky. It is the myth that is mingled with the rush of blood. You in the subtleties of dust and memory. You in the shining only revealed with the arrival of the night.

The night it yawns, the night it stretches. The night settles into its drafts and strictures. Moments before moonrise, and there are scraps of constellations lingering just to the side of language. All these partial pictures, bereft of the weight of their telling. Something loosened near the knotted roots of gravity. Something caught between each instance and the depths of recollection.

It is in the way waking finds me. It is in the way sleep leaves me lost. The dreaming that seeps through the seams of each laden day, the enchanted and the remembered. You are the core of all that I regret, the soul of all the feeling in the flesh. Sunlight changed forever because it once touched your skin. The stars forever tangled in the mystery of your gaze.