decrescendo

Finally, I sit down, and the sun gets up to leave. I try not to take it personally, it’s a busy star and besides they say the world’s to blame. Sometimes tossing, ever turning, I am still upon this restless earth as the lights go down. Maybe I’m waiting for something I’ll never see; maybe I’m waiting for someone to leave. The heart goes tight at the height of the inhalation, then I feel it fall and gush. The embers are bright, the smoke is flush with the shadows, Jupiter shines above the shapes cut from the purpling sky. A roof, a tree, little sympathy for the one that is found in fault. 

Night arrives, and even the stars are hidden. Porch light moths and busy spiders go through their routines, spilled smoke and smudged lenses dulling inept eyes. The day takes and takes until you are burned down to a nub. The day smokes you to the filter, the night arrives and offers you a light. Cars creep the curbs, the roof is given over to rats and the Queen of the Night. I am a wreck, I am in ruins, sleep is the mystery of an uncharted shore. Sleep is the best reward the undeserving can expect. The course is clear, the path obscured by mood and meat.

I am crowned in cobwebs, I am obscured by the light that lands at my feet. Fate eludes me like any passing thought. Items on the list remain unchecked, doors to check and dishes yet to do. I bear the curse without a clue, what happened to me, what happened with you. Sing it to the unseen stars, pray to gods of words and tears, tear the seal to find the beast as absent as if you rolled back the stone on that emptied tomb. The earth allows for what is, the earth remits no easy answers. The calendar turns, the heart beats it’s sad tattoos, we escape the orbit of our allotted portions. The fall only this open book, flight and the forever wish for wings. The fall all I am owed of this hollow bounty.

extant

It does no good to fret and fuss, it does no good to fight and strive. The table is set, drabs and drabs on mismatched dishes, some helping themselves to heaps and heaps while others are told to wait their turn. If you play along maybe you’ll get to some promised heaven, though it sounds like a scam to me. Colorblind, I see past the plumage. Empty handed, I know where to put the knife.

The smart play would be to get up and go. The smart play would be to bury them beneath a flurry of fists and furies, a bullet in the belly and the house on fire. They won’t be satisfied until your in chains. They won’t be satisfied until they murder the last life on earth, they won’t be satisfied until they swallow the suns. No distinction between their gods and monsters. No room to breathe or bloom. 

The room is always empty. The light is always on. There’s no one left to take your part, just honey lipped strangers and the words you long to hear. Just scavengers to pick your brains and gnaw your bones. Just strangers to squander your blood and your trust. You are here, just as alive as anyone. It’s as much yours as anybody else’s, the kingdom and the glory another damn fairy story missing the glimmer of truth. Leaves spilling from the gutters as the forest is punished tree by tree. This is how you think of me. This is how you think of me.

tantalus

It is the rigor of the triggers,

the cunning of the trap,

green leaf yellow leaf brown leaf—

seasons on repeat. The eyes go to

where the mouth will water,

the pretty of the picture, 

the crisp of the whisper and 

the certain in the crunch,

all this keening clipped from

magazines and gibbering screens,

home where they know to

lock you out, burnt photos and

salt-rimmed spells. The curve

her hips threw your hands 

as the cure of her kiss again

eludes, half flavor half feel

almost savored upon the sudden 

sight of her, ripe fruit and 

cool water. You reach for

the moon stuck up a tree,

the last star fallen

struck down with a wish.

no there there

What are we to do with the stardust in our eyes when the day comes too soon? Who are we beneath this skipped beat sky with the sun sneaking in? The past both irretrievable and omnipresent, the future a bedtime story meant to keep the monsters away, it is always this hopeless plodding on. Winnowed away as the world comes in heaps, dreams drained of all but dread, wishes left hanging from the absent star that looms in the halo of its destruction. Just the misgiven and the lost beat, and the trembling transmission of this wad of nerve, gristle, and gloom. 

The room closes in, hiding from the broadcast sky and the telegraphed reactions. The indecisive autumn, and the sinking ship of soul. Fragments full of hyperbole and fragrant turns of phrase. The dimwit numberings, and the digging of the grave. Weeping through the seasons and praying for sweet mercy, carrying cruelty in this dead eyed heart and dismal daily sins on these lips. The habitual rhetoric and spit. The story that goes nowhere, this sticking with the sinking ship.

No one calls, no one writes, nothing eases the endless nights or puts the ceaseless days to rest. I am the roaches in the ashtray, I am the spider in the shower. It goes on and on, and all but the most dismal pieces of me have long since gone to dust. There is no case to be made but want and lack, the empty overcoat hanging on the broken rack. The abandoned altar waiting with nothing left to offer, the strange pains rising from the dying flesh dragged through this pointless pantomime. Music hall, and vaudeville, and all the shows that have all but closed. The shine of salt streaked cheeks and the Seven Cities of Cibola shimmering somewhere beyond the horizon. Drunk on compasses and words I’ll never hear, starving on all these just desserts.

continuity

It’s the comfort of wasps in the wind chimes, it’s the comfort of children screaming in the street. It’s wedding bells and bacchanals and words you never heard. It’s the Diesel engine idling across the street, waiting for their plug. These longings that no longer pay out, these tenders that don’t tend towards you. Teenage romance and pop stars and celebrities you never heard of. You ride it til the wheels come off, you ride it into glue, there’s always more miles to go. Whether you’re game or gone, there’s always more road to run. 

Maybe it turns out you’re a goner, maybe losing is all that’s left. Maybe your day is done. There’s still someone waiting on the sun. There’s still someone yet to shine. It’s not enough to live on, it won’t keep the devil from the seat by your bed. The pain keeps coming and the fear only gets braver as the years boil away. The beatings won’t be belayed, and the worse doesn’t lose any sleep over your breaks and bruises. The time of the long lonely nights has found you. Alone is all you have left. But the odds will still find their favorites even as you bleed out in the street. Someone’s star still burns bright as the night crowds on in.

There’s not much left to it. A few words, remembered flowers, kisses lingering from some long dead dream. Comedies of manners and bitter dregs. Wish and want, shout and taunt, the bullets don’t bother with names. Dusk has come, and it’s getting darker. There’s nothing left to do but be buried by the night. It doesn’t matter what I meant, it doesn’t matter what my heart once held. There is life in all this dust, the show goes on as we know it must. 

apparatus

This is the broken record. This is the busted clock, right twice and preaching to the time. The floor is strewn with the remains of the altercation, the unwound fob in slow release, the spring talking down the tension. Light and dust pay shiftless witness, prophecy and process holding hands at the intersection. All this time taken winding down.

Throw the bones, read the leaves, toss your fortune to the stars. Live garbage day to garbage day. You are the reason set to rhyme, you are the rattling of the cans, the timepiece automaton set to sort and strew. The shadow whirls around the needle, the scrying of the fire, the tongue of smoke and breath. The machine every piece that turns out a part.

Offer up and get a clue about tomorrow. Wait it out and the puzzle’s about the same. It is this persistence towards the perpetuity, the pendulum of the palindrome. The shell brims with irrelevance, nameless and unneeded. These reachings in the dark, the heartbeat, the endless ticking. Crows start a ruckus in the fallen leaves. The pail fills, blood and broken crowns. The skull brims over and the words spill out. One thing leads to another, then another and so on until it all comes to nothing, and something like it starts again.

epitome

Step away from the story. Back away from the day. Close your eyes without another thought about it. Rest your head as if you ever slept or dreamed. The word still moving over the water. All this smoke to show the fire. All this grief in leaps and bounds. The cross you carry is the one they stick you with. A hammer is a hammer, but it still means every nail.

I’m a broken record and a busted clock. The full moon slips in the window like it’s in a song. The house is slow and open to the night, the skipping of the needle, the weighing of the words. Gravity the only given. The heaviness comes bearing down, heaven cracks and grinds. The dog sighs deep, trash cans drag and bang. The street says something to itself and doesn’t meet my gaze.

There’s no quibbling with the numbers. There’s no accounting for taste. The heart wants its wants and carries all it can. The beauty a burden on every breath, the slipping singing out. Wishes made of grease and gristle, wishes the shade of moon on bone. Ten thousand lives all lived alone. Reaching like the sky towards stars, the peak broke horizon. The rising of the firmament, the furthering of the fall.