defined

Some days we find ourselves between obsessions. Some days imagination strains. Gaze towards the hill line, bathed in the settled sun. Listen to the work of limb and feather. A song glides upon an updraft. The thoughts just drift or drown.

The lost continent arises from the glibly familiar, the world ignored while chasing ghosts and writing reasons. The scent of heat, the cast of dust. The world as it tumbles around its bonded star, the whirring reoccurrence of day and night into the broad perpetuity. The impotence of description in witness of the thing itself.

I would say I wandered true. I would say I found a path for walking. The day had little interest in any ebb or flow, no course to cry for when it knew I was in the wrong. Sweat and sunburn and the direction of dogs. Whatever words I shed will wear down and ring untrue. The things we claim supplanted by the things we do, history always writing itself obsolete. Whatever tracks I leave will lose their place and wear out any welcome.

let's get lost

Somehow the heat slips in between me and sleep, and I am barefoot pacing the dusty yard. Somehow midnight whiles past, and I am watching moths wave good-bye. It's always something the mind opines. It's always so close, fingers brushing flesh. The hours drawls as if wisdom awaits.

I seek confusion. So sure that my plodding certainty is the wrong straw clenched, I try to find what I do not identify. Kiss me quick and tamp my brow. The night is a fever caught in my eyes. The night is a blur and a lie. The only road defies detection.

When I wrote this, I had almost forgotten. When I wrote this, all I could do was repeat. The same gray shade, the same brief glimmer. The glamour of some woman without a name. That weight of saying asleep beneath my tongue, that name held gentle. I said it then, as if it was new. I will say it again and again.

broad autumnal

The world doesn't divulge the depths of its feel, the breadth of the draw, the grasp of the limits of light. It only slows beneath these strokes of shadows. It only sleeps in the sense that it dreams without end. The shrieks of the girls in the soccer field echoing through the steel gleam and the painted fall. An owl somewhere nearer to heaven, calling down sign.

The day clings to the beaches, it slows near the rivers. It gives each and every, and then it is gone. We scarcely note the replacement. We are callus and we are fickle, devouring all these lined up lovelies. We are apt and we are hungry. Confession never catches us clear.

I sweat through my shirt as if it was in contest. I fail every test and blame it on the wind. Pine needle and crow feather. Evidence just flings itself at my feet. I will feel this summer for my life and then forget it. I will feel this autumn caught in the constellations peeping through the fence. The world broods on, and I follow my laundry. The word says nothing, and all the words fall down.

blunt color blue

I favor my swords already freed of stones, quick the better portion of sharp. I favor shedding my shields too soon. The played out poems and the days that bloom like wounds, the dry dust and the dirty water. All these notes of remission left scratching at the window. All these ideas about tomorrow driven over the edge. The fresh blade readied to part the sky, falling through this blunt color blue.

I guess there is a surrender left, overwhelmed by my own bitter nature. The epitaph written beneath this squandered skin. The gravitas of the deep descent. Just old enough to know what is left inside. Somehow still green, catching up with the rest of the class. Somehow broken beneath these impermeable layers of iron and earth. Always ready for the wrong war, the infighting left despite this enduring siege.

I have given up before, and I will give up again. I don't have the grit left for this sort of fight. The sullen battle of attrition, time running out as the ammo is the only thing saved. The flesh abdicates, leaving nothing to pace the floors and watch the walls. Grace only something you used to say before supper. Redemption only another flawed reboot. The sword stuck casting shadows, the sky painted windows blazing as the lights go down.

the slow dissolve

The truth just trickles down your chin, all these stars and sighs and watermarks. Glib sparks that light and heat your smile. The machinations gone up in smoke, the soul gone down in flames. The tale followed into the woods, the crushed mutters of dead leaf and broken wing. Something in that air that bends the air toward ghosts. Something in the dust and humus, the open grave of the slow dissolve.

The crossroads wait in warning, these stories of travelers and mistakes in the dark. The humble dusk, the finger prints of smudged grease and soot. The first words ever spelled out in that dust. A marker by the trail, that sudden stack of stones. These ancient sayings salting our bitter fields. These oldest voices weighing on our bones.

The night arrives. I miss your light. The press of your hip, the heat of your flesh. Those blissful fumblings from the borders of some wished for world. The simple facts that arrive as poetry. The creak and yawn of the dark against the windows. The strangeness of every bed without you.

golden rule

There is a voice far below the sirens, the scratching of roots, the whispered shifting of stone and soil. There is a call stitched to every shadow, a beacon bound to every star. The night, the day, the flow and stagger. The fairy winged mosquitos. The night birds with their wings of ghosts. She speaks to skin and soul.

It isn't enough that my name eludes me? Isn't enough that every word has dried up and blown away? The moon presses down with every breath. With each breath the appetites increase. The last hurrah and the blue abandon. That first kiss wonder always hiding just over the rise. The way the eye always slides towards that bright horizon.

I am not so much lost as drawn more subtle. I am not so much burnt out as learning to abide these flames. The hush is heavy without the levity of distant voices. This season but the tide run low. You may search or pry, you might hunt and stalk. Your sights might find me greased with moonlight and a pause in the wind. The rule is never simple get or get got. Law must always find the water level. That same call behind every fickle shine. If you see me, I can see you.

no photo

The day grinds on, all gasp and hush, all spill and greed. The sky is staggered sun and clouds, blue and white and all manner of yellow muddling through heaven. The light still knows the feel of your skin. The night still cups its hands to gather your tears. This I know, though I can not prove it. This I know by way of bone and blood and clumsy memory, the truth so seldom held until it has been abandoned.

You took the pictures, you kept the proof. Together, then apart. Forever, then never again. There were letters, there were witnesses. Not one thing, no one soul to trust. We all inherit our failings along with our virtues. Eventually there is no way to distinguish one from the other. The villain proves the victim, the saint proves only another beast. All our history reverse engineered from how it ends. Even gone all these decades you paint the scenery with your improvident absence. Even without you here, you drown the day.

I have been cursed and reviled, attacked and endured and finally forgotten. Everybody gets to be Ozymandias over time. My effigy burned in ashtray and photographic ash, the very idea of me a fury in your heart. I could never have replied in kind. You are tattooed on the inside of my eyes, you are stitched into the shadows beneath my skin. There is no photo to remind that I can not forget. There is no switch to flip that can turn off this light.