to whom it may concern

The Blood/Ghost Ratio will be on hiatus for January 2013. Instead of the regular entries, I will instead publish older poems each day for the month's duration. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Happy New Year,
                        Murray Perrine

a little off the top

There are always going to be adjustments. The game can change as long as the ball is in play. One day it is all want and promise. The next they say what they really mean. At least maybe you can run for cover. At least maybe this way you can cut your losses. The dream must end when you speak the truth.

So young to know that you are beaten. So young to know you outlived your time. The records spins, somewhere in your past, the one that hissed and spat. The old poems lost in their boxes. This shuffle of words and dust dissolved in the bright winter sky. An oath sworn on radio waves, a promise made to vapor trails while the sun burns and burns. The children laugh and dance in circles. Their worlds still too green to burn.

The papers talk of impending endings. Doom cast in the shape of the ancient incantations, hell made from the sweepings of broken spells. Somehow the magic keeps happening. Somehow the illusion abides. The way the world is always posted in anticipation of its changing. The way all the words are wasted while someone waits their turn. The last days spent rooting through the sales bins. The last days spent sharing every ache with strangers. Every romance left you just confused suspense.

oblivion

You trace your scars like constellations, you sweep the street eyes loaded and ready to bear. The night comes with its compliment of stars and ice all hidden by the bright and bloated moon. There is an itch the nails aren't reaching, there are pieces of a broken pot lodged inside your heart. It hurts because it is still beating, it hurts because the lights are on. You pace the yard and cast your shadow, then turn towards it and tramp it down. You know it's you because who else could it be, here in the middle of all this busted scenery. You know it's you because no-one would be inside this mess if they didn't have to be.

Again the wisdom of the knife, the preaching of the hammer. The murderers deny each time their tools their share of glory. The blind spot never entirely in the eyes. The critique the lost blaming the map. The cold thinks it is invited because you let the fire die. God always in the margins, messing with the doors and windows. It isn't the recipe that is the disaster when you consider the ingredients.

You write it down like it was gospel. You write it like the origin story of an open book. The words forget their purpose when spoken of so wrong. The mantra is the open vein, the dogma is the loaded pistol. Your heart will try to tell the truth, but language always takes its cut. The pain is measured by the distance, the stretch of light along the horizon, the sky speckled with ancient shine. The empty is so wide we make up things to fill it. The empty is so vast it is all there is. Painted pretty like those pictures in your childhood fairy tales. Painted pretty like your love before you bury it forever in the cold dark earth.

ubiquity

It is the same icy wind blowing through me, the same afternoon no matter what the calendar says. The same gray light drowning all about. The same sad sinking invisible sun lost among the clouds. The rain making rings in the puddles. The smoke seeping from between my lips. This dull refrain, this crushing ubiquity.

The dogs all track the mud in. My fingers make no sense. Yet another brace of letters. Yet another posit to disprove. The rain pounds down through the pines, making needle and leaf dance and glitter. The deluge falls in strings of syntax, the argument spatters across the leaky roof. All I hear is the tapping of each retort, the din of this debate. I suppose we all have our reasons. I suppose I might even have one myself.

Each syllogism is a symptom of these symbols. Each philosophy a stitch in my breathing, every contention something caught in my throat. All my words gather in puddles and empty pots. All my stories left outside too long. I write the same lines, the way they fell from from heaven, the way they first sang it all into being. I draw another breath of smoke to keep the embers going. All this wind and ash only to keep this fire alive.

marked

This is the song of salts and solace. The near window left open to frame that farther star. This is the corner of gathered shadows, clinging to this obscure phrase. You cross yourself to make right by heaven, muttering out your breathless oaths. You promise the moon, you claim forever, bared shoulders and warm flesh. Her voice the music you are somehow always after. Her kiss the symptom and the sign.

The storm cracked open a hole in the sky, the sheath of stars glimmering like frost in this wide and early winter. The neighbors dogs loose their throats, wailing like the sirens that set them off. You watch the clock and mind the time. The hours settle like snow drifts, the hours seep and pool. The quiet street, the darkened windows. Christmas lights catch the eye like nearing prophecy. You wish on her as if she was the only star in sight.

The magic is always in the seeming. The moon in the tree top, the frost on the roof. You look to the sky to settle your bet, the earth to cut your losses. The streets swell with an empty they cannot contain. The sky seems to spark and shiver. Outside you watch your words gain shape, speaking her name aloud. The season looks the other way. You were marked before you got here, changed with one look into her eyes.

every single day

This begins back in the days of the unsent letters. This begins before the era of private hand held worlds. Back before the age of detachment, back before the bubble burst. It is longer than the stretch of memory, further away than all these useless dreams. I start to follow, then it eludes me. I see the passage right as the passage is gone. They say history ends because they can't stop talking. They let you speak so they can think of the next thing to say.

There is nothing new about this fleeting purchase. There is nothing new about the words unmoored. The language always marked by great scars and faint striations, always tattooed with the rope and the lash. The adjusted  definition always a tumult to some dull soul. The witness always close to the victim of the crime. This sea of twitches and little regard. This illusion that this confusion could be cured by more words.

Again I get lost out here in the tall weeds. Again I lose my way out walking in the rain. These words and words that allow no transit. These lights that only serve to blind. Because they forget, there is no history. Because they forget, the meaning is gone. Nothing ever gained from attempted communication. This dismay my only purpose. Only as good as the very last thing said.

cast your spell

The change is so subtle you hardly notice, the fixed blue sky gone gray. A cold breeze spills down from heaven as the world around me is engulfed in shadow. The rain of daily prophecy awaits no invitation.There is this breath of hesitation, you so distant, my hands so cold. There is this pause in the atmosphere as the storm arrives. There is a hush that feels like the sound of your voice before you speak. In your absence you are everywhere, my world so wound around you.

You are the sound on the roof when the rain starts falling. You are the light in the sky when the storm relents. You are weight of stones and the song of water.  I see you picture on my mantle. I see your letter on my desk. You cast your spell of lively eyes and native graces. I feel you spark in the trace of my senses. I feel you savor my every breath.

You won't be here when the sun goes away. You won't be here when the dawn comes again. The world is shake and shambles. The world is painted on pot shards, the world is scrawled on the walls. I haunt the same old hallways. I sing the same old songs. My voice rough and clotted. My heart a hunger than is never sated. The word falls hard and so short of your measure. You are absent from all but my appetites.