nocturn or nocturne

The hour is early, the sky already given up for gray. It is a time of kitchens and electric lights, of dinner plates and piles of lies. Families entangled like the rat king's tails, gnashing and writhing away in the usual style. Ordinary forms and trying exchanges, the lives lost to strangled chance and surrendered roads. Here it is still, a sort of formalism made from gathered books and the unyielding attentions of dust. Here it is quiet, just that hint of music, the morning songs of night birds. Barking dogs and car alarms blow reveille, calling out to the army of roofs and fences.

The roads lay down just where you left them last, stretching farther than perspective would allow. Running through field and over hill, reaching from town to town and from light to light. Asphalt poured all across the scenery, travel spilled all over the map. They are always coming for you, and always running away. The days savored and those despised all wander off to die, leaving only notions and past tense as company.

Night settles down to stay, asking very little and taking less. The reckoning of weather, the weight of an unsettled sky. The drizzling of incidentals, background noise and inevitable collision. The mismatched parts and the missing pieces all whisper away, like prayer escaping a church yard or music falling from the heavens. Ring your bells, fire off that respectful salvo, blow the last solo of the day. Share every confusion you can. Something will arise, nocturn or nocturne, to serve the absent day.

prelude

Before the last light goes out, before the gathering shadows engulf us all, before the day dwindles down to a fine and distant glow you begin again. You slip into the material, wearing the coolness of autumn over that endless summer flesh. You shed the very season, all stride and song. The night races down the lonely road, chasing after the rhythm of your heels. You take in each star and every cloud, bound to share the skin of heaven. All alone with the night all but ignoring me, I wouldn't be surprised were you wearing wings.

I am always talking out of turn, the words always squirming their way out of my mouth.  Speech a power wound in curses, my breath always running out. Seeing you, I say too much, and all the words are never enough. You obliterate all answers, outshine every sense of splendor and finery. You are beyond the scratch and scrape of language. Even your name cannot meet your measure.

I don't know what road you've chosen. I don't know what skies you bless. It is hard to find any landmarks when the weeds all sway in tandem.  It is hard to trust the marker when the odds are so astray. You arrive from behind the veil of matter, binding your grace to the material world. These cold nights and empty rooms rattling in your wake. You rise inside the impetus of every thought, always the first breath and last word. Yours is always the prayer I offer, you the prelude to every day.

extra

The day dropped the ball, the gray painted sky swayed blue and gold, all aglow from these atmospheric coincidences. The dusk a little closer, the fleeting clock, the falling earth. I limp along, high strung and bottomed out, eyes having settled on the puzzles of terrain and stride. I plod across dust and stone, sticking to a routine, knowing my place. I play the part, another of the assorted selected background talent cast to fill out the scene. Not much is expected, and do I ever deliver.

Night arrives a bit too early, porch lit moths spending energy finding all the wrong lights. Quiet houses stand stoic before the ruckus of the street. Squealing children and speeding vehicles, the combination always worse than it sounds. If there are stars out, I don't notice. My eyes watching out for the sort of troubles you can step over. My eyes watching out for something that will match the map.

I make some coffee, turn on the computer. Check whatever messages that arrive at some associated address. Turns out there are still things left to buy, and they are making more of them. Turns out I have been chosen, again and again and again. I dismiss most of it without a glance, this being that sort of day in that kind of age. With such an accommodating ocean, why bother with bottles? What washes away but these small attentions, in a sea so busy and vast? Questions that get along fine without any answers. A world that isn't looking for company at all.

moving pictures

The credits role, and it's the same old song, though a good one and a favorite. The cat stretches in my lap, dragging its claws across the comforter. The dog on the sofa is thick in his dreams, chasing something in his sleep. The movie's over, midnight's come and gone. It is always the hour after, once your number comes around.

Steady yourself against these conceits of slumber, the comfort of these inky depths cannot be sustained. I wouldn't want to wake you with some message you'd dismiss. I wouldn't want you to wake with your dreams in tatters, my voice the first trace of the world to be. Still, this stillness will not last. The world will not allow even this least respite.

The song fades out and the music changes. An elegant glissando threads through the empty air. The cat purrs, the dog stirs and gives up the chase. All the hours gather, pressed against shine and shadow. The credits end, the image fades to black. The night crawls on, and you are nowhere near. The night crawls on, an all I see is you.

Christmas lights

It is funny how the season passes. It's so strange the way the feeling fades. All the lights strung out one after another. All these constellations made from wire and plastic. The mood light amusements and the meager givens. The blunt recoil of the schedule meets the muffled retort of the heart.

The streets stretch out, yawning through the stillness and the frost. The sidewalks pause and reflect the gleam and glow of street-lamps and passing traffic. The gutters still cluttered with leaf and trash, as the strays work out their schemes. The night almost free to be like any other. Cold and dark and threaded with loneliness.

It is particular to this species, all the dreamy longing. Never alone in any given moment. Never at ease when tomorrow is in the works. The dissatisfaction that comes from being a little too easy to satisfy. The discontent that arises from keeping eyes on the unfolding road. The world all aglow with the least of feasts and the fitful scenery. Treasure everywhere, and still it is the sadness speaking softly in all the squandered rooms. Listening for a word or a voice, some small measure to make it worth all this waiting.

amalgam

In this dream one of us is having, you are always almost there. The hour is upon me, and I can taste your kiss from around a corner, feel your flesh press from afar. This is the dream of us I keep having, the trick of the mirror, the narrative power of the editor's credit. Your name just there, slipping down my tongue. A breath and the clasp and huff of pronunciation, and every prayer comes due. Sleep is just lousy with these sorts of tricks.

There was no knowing either question or answer, the whole point seeming that certain straight ahead. There was no truth in telling what the world had already shown. From feather bed to fever dream, from over kill to after glow. Was it that moment from that other world of fitful glimpses and deep recall, or the shimmer of altered metals settling into that amalgam I know by heart? Was it the flicker of candles snuffed or the terror of wishes granted? The reason or the go-between.

The change is that much more astounding, from dream true to truth told. Waking on this pavement made of mistakes. Waking in the world the way it wore me, from music to the score as it scans. This faith a kind of satiation, finished by a bellyful of this same old world. Cold air and bare skin, the scramble for swaddling cloth. Candy canes and Christmas lighting lingering in the slow stretch of longing. The stark naked certainty of your arrival in this life we'll never know.

either or

I wake up nowhere in particular, some fuzzy hour in some shabby room. I turn the joint over top to bottom, and still can't find the will to begin again. The blood won't answer, and the ghost doesn't know. Adrift on the wind swept edge of nursery rhyme, casting shadows, kicking stones.

There is that vague whisper of wanting, the clotted breath in the icy air casting shadows on the yard. The flesh grows cold as it presses through the hours, placing its faith in a room always nearing. A fire always ready for the failing light. Some smoke soaked future always fleeing the inferno. Some drift of instinct into the frame of the flash, that instant mistaken for the mold.

The ache is earned like afterglow, the echo of some cherished repetition. The photo tattered and creased, the feeling clinging on and on. The days labor away at each stillness, devouring the creeping spaces between every blessed act. Rare bird or cactus flower, I can not find you. Some made up name, some bet on number. The chill in the air and the saw stroke of stiff joints. The distance between me and the knowing of your name the distance from wolf to dog.