stars apart

Another boom and the moon is peeking through the part in the curtains, neither cause for the streaming tears, those only the parlance of our times. A breath goes down wrong and it’s all hack and rasp, lungs like the billowing tattered plastic bags flying from a fence like the standard of some long buried battalion. The curtains stir and the moon winks, the world watching every move. Asleep and dreaming with eyes wide open.

Spent ordinance and the refurbishment of the spent narrative, the other caught in creased missives and exposed by the ever expanding nature of consequences. The sky reaches until the day and night touch, the moonlight spills and swells, the sun ablaze in blood and bone shining lies upon every skin and stone. The red queen always a black jack no matter what the eye might say, there’s always some extra legerdemain left in the tell that gives away the identity below the day. 

There’s the weather and there’s these perpetually refitted memories, moments that linger despite every last spark of life of them long since turned to dust. The gone goes on through the observable universe as the heres linger while every there puts more space to its where. The discourse of the everyday quickly becomes fresh omens and old chestnuts, as each and every star departs, leaving little consolation but the still recognizable constellations. We are spent, we are burning, we are temporarily here to stay. Here but for the auspices so far, the worst well assured by the constitution of the fuse.

least

I wake and try to find a way not to face the day. From the first turn of phrase to the rigors of the litanies it quickly slips away, sand to castles, tricks to light. The illness at once sets in, faint salvos and thunderous whispers, words emerge in fusillades and flurries. It’s the way flesh finds me in a heap and drags me to these dragging feet, the stations I pace and the muscle memory residuals, bait cut breath by breath. I succumb to the ritual of any available crutch, the placement of the lighter, the lean of the incense burning the mortal at both ends. The animal gets lost in the apologia, the gods too busy with their acrostics. 

I vie for distraction before the flags unfurl, before further atrocity carried out by the nation state is revealed, before the inevitable revels over the dead. Witness has given way to a narrow ambivalence and a sense of isolation in the decay of old traditions, words set ablaze in gleeful malfeasance at every turn. Ugly and flustered and full of beans. I fix my focus and follow cat and crow, the bolts loosed by wind and bent bough, leaning heavily into any loose chemistry left in the mix. Like a fever the press of stones and sticks arises from the languid brick lined pit where the bound words dwell, dull and drowned until summoned like a fiend stuck in a craft store star. Beneath the heat and tumult, I watch several fledgling crows figure out how peanuts work. 

It’s the rattle upon inhalation, it’s the thud and shutter of the heart, that ill meat between sense and sentience sputtering in sparks and strokes. That first hint of cognition in collision with some shape disappeared in the peripheral or some suddenly met mirror. The swell of shadows as the scenery overflows, unspoken words swarming a heavy tongue. These palpable pitter patters so close to the surface, these names that come craving articulation. Twilight gets stuck in my lungs, all cough and clamber and bees in amber, wheeze and spatter beneath the implicit proscenium as I return to earth. This long fall the slow fade from the world, the least of men and beasts, the passion a scratching at the lid of a coffin.

mitigate

It comes in strange dreams and onerous portents, the hawk on the fence post, the owl at your window. The abrupt elocutions of a raven amid a chorus of crows, the stepped crack, the snapped bone. There is always some score being settled, always unseen pieces in play, forces brute and subtle displayed cavalierly in the clatter of the marbles and the music of the spheres. Here within these cursings of the cursor incidents of fearsome happenstance and ambivalent fate mingle in this bucket of inklings and tingles, marking every I with a wearily sighed X. So we move to mitigate all the alarm, mingling small hopes in with the harbingers of dust.

There is the broadened blue idling in the sky, the seen spectra and assorted life proofs tool around the scene in blip and blur, we barely stir under the weight of entropy’s embrace. That impact of depth and brevity changing the temper of the flesh, the bruise you choose from inside the incarnation, the self settling like smoke in the notes. The very air a buzz with divisions and collisions, the glint of dragonfly and the hint of hummingbirds, the firmament astir with the feats of ascendant swallows. A nearby mockingbird sings its greatest hits on shuffle, horns honk as a raptor drags its shadow across the yard. Place and placeholder, mirror and map, the rigors of the razor and the rule of the strop. 

The wind picks up a sets the scenery all a shimmer, the green sea sieve of leaves tickling scintillations from all the weeds and succulents. Sirens sound as the afternoon just vamps, snips of the songbook and snails wrought through hints of scales, awash in the breadth of the broad continuity. Sometimes you needn’t bother with the signs, the wroth of unacknowledged gods and the affront of local spirits are always awaiting fresh heels to hound. The hum and drum of this heap enough navigation, this cavalcade of bum and crumb enough onslaught, just the dusty shelf for this generic self. Let the sun dim on a cloudless day, let the dead rise for judgment, leave all these ominous wings to the birds. You are beset from all sides.

unbidden

It is the earth that moves and not the cursor. It is the feet and the fields and not the map. This warm sun, this striped sky, this river of sticks and soil and detritus that spills out of frame and into the continuity. The landscape pervades the atmosphere as the unspoken is spelled out as a lapse in milk and honey, a wandering so far away from first tongue dirt that the words can only serve so long before turning feral. There is nothing, then there is speaking. There was speaking, now there is nothing again. 

Smoke curls towards the eaves, the swole moon is waning unseen, and flies light upon head and limbs like a test of the flesh. Trash and dead leaves skitter down the street despite the season as the porch ants work their algorithms and a lone fly schemes about my elbow. This is the slow of the growing shadow, the stir of the statistics in the atmosphere, the dull plod of the settle as it spreads. It is the spider by the lighter and only ash left to offer up or down. There is a pause at the precipice, a vertigo above a yawning hunger, then a breeze resets the arrow. This plunge and the flame a flicker.

We echo into specters, we grow into the ghosts, these notions that we once inhabited now just light upon the water of the open road. The night arrives in illuminated rotation as the room is confined to blithering screen and earnest lamp glow. The loosed arrow falls, time on an incline, only music and mood. Curtains rise and curtains close, the show just goes and goes. We arrive on the scene, beneath these stars, within these walls and doors unbidden and unknown. The breath will ebb, the breath will flow, no worse for wear no one the wiser. The battered slate, the scuffed up silence.

episode

This one starts with the pines through the window, though I don’t know where it’s going yet. Maybe there’s a lesson, maybe the moon shows up. Maybe there’s nothing but the vamp, the one, the two, the old soft shoe. The wind is on its hind legs, and the sky is a gentle brushed blue, and the pines half shrug as they sway. I falter on without much else to go on, aimless efforts stranded in strays and eddies, a shuffle of loosely parked cars and gossip. The wind and the waving, and the obdurate stretch of daylight.

There’s a train wail, then the whole catfight raucoustra choreography with every hiss and yowl in the canon. The window is dark now so you know it’s night. The big empty yawning straight out into the air and localized effects. The empty on me all the time, then all at once. The fading of a pair of motorcycles, the keening of a far off siren, this feeling away from my aptitudes. Sometimes there are dogs barking and they aren’t my dogs. Other times, well, who’s to say? 

Mostly it’s the scene you make of it, dead branches blown to life by gust and zephyr animated by the sameness of the background. A sense of mountain range or star spread amid the spider silk and deadfall. One or the other, then one for all. I begin, a flinch or a feint, then some is or ain’t. There’s no telling because I am out of things to say. So brick by brick and bird by bird, there is a shape inside the skull. The path made clear in absence and inference, the passage becomes the text. An open window, and on you go.

the effin ineffable

It’s the way the world watches you through each crack and crevice. It’s the world that watches you beguiled inside your sight, this testimonial of chemistry, this scribble of quantum epithets. It scratches at your itches and lies through your teeth, a victorious laurel or funeral wreath. Every breath all rasp and ration, syllables slipping through flesh and bone, the cloister of the nasal and the brothel of tongue and lips evident in every prayer. The are a million million transitions, sums tippling from the tree roots, staggering calculations made entirely of the collateral coiling into infinity and exhaust. You build and boil in filament and plume, your secret only lasting as long as you burn. 

It all keeps coming so you fill in your fire with whatever might fuel you, the hard won placeholder as you tack against the billowing moments, the star you are in the minded map. Immediacy always currency in the profane exchange of nows, the seeing only after the say so, the vow gone as it is voiced. Everything errs on the effin ineffable, this expression of scads of peculiar particulars, this stir of collaterals reaching out to the firmament. This slow inventory, counting down by unfathomables, blood and breath and the stubborn depths. The stagger, the struggle, the grudging not so fast. The grace despite the placement, the strive behind the trash. 

It’s there as the sun beats heat into the scene so hard I can feel it in the shade of the porch, a soft opening of summer, a stamp upon the back of my skull. It’s there as the scenery is shaped by the laborious light, plaited grains and blazing chains and symbols shed to the syllabary, a loose conspiracy of various wings and halos and the usual harbingers hearking it all to hell. It’s that natal rhythm section bending your ear, all these lessons having evaporated years and years ago. No leads, no limburger, if it’s dancing then we dance. No primer, no paint, just this faint pulsing of the process. The tilt of the wind in what is missing.

monkey’s paw

I lost count of the answer staring at the ashtray, the remainders in some strange arrangement, the what it was that I was smoking. Maybe if I took a picture, maybe if I read the room. Instead there’s only evidence, the residue of ambient wishing, the hint of some coded clue. The song gets stuck in the shuffle. The song gets caught in the wind. I guess that’s what keeps me listening to the tuning out and tuning in. These gaudy stragglers, these spent fragments, the ringing of a chime. Sifting through transmissions, all echoes and repetition as the phrase overturns, awaiting this ignition.

So much for the scintillation, so much for the effervescent, so much for the spheres wheeling out a tune. The stars stay parked where they were. The moment gone the way they do. The plot lost until you’ve ridden off the rails. The flesh chills, the spirit slows, loitering in the leaves. I can nearly taste the kiss that sealed it, the magic and the monkey mind, the dirt to every deed. I can nearly see that bright tomorrow snatched away in the small prints and fortune stitched lines. The devil deal, the slap of the creator, something wicked shambling in the words. It comes on command and leaves you wanting behind bolted doors. 

Count your wishes as if they were blessings. Enjoy a mythos woven around card cheats and lawyers, caught as we are in the telling. The little dog nips at the fool’s heels and hams, such fun for the laughing, as they spill like Jack and Jill. The story is there for anyone to tell, depending upon such things as the rake of the stage and the average word count. The game is in your face and what is shown. The troubles keep coming, they soldier on and work in teams and platoons and hordes. Trouble knows you like the back of its hand, trouble comes looking. God’s love at best a beating, hell wide open because of everything you are.