that radiant vacancy

You can count the lassitudes of kindness, dog bite and nail scratch, the bruises and the blues. Enmity radiates from every corner, fervor in every evil eye. You drift over these usual attempts at good works, understanding the blessings of solitude, empathetic to the urge to murder. My life's work lives only in vitriol, scars, and dust.

Then the fits and spats of language, that need to say and savor. These dim lights and old tunes and empty spills. This pull of that radiant vacancy inside me that draws this out again and again. Head aches and seeping wounds, the hours that moan and sigh. Aim how you like for respite, call upon all the agents of mercy, mouth off to every heavenly intercessor: this receiver is only wired for certain limited reception. The few signals that run strong carry just the worst voices, seethe with each wrong song. Sucking air, spitting wind. Even the jubilation of survival has its limits.

Worn through, worn through, now it comes in threes and twos. The wormed notions, the warning bells. How light this fever fills when the mood is upon me. Tattered rooms and threadbare rags and whole menagerie of beasts and vermin. The skull splits with a practiced crash, all the blessings felt are dashed down into the dirt and stones. I stand straight, despite the weight, the attempts this machine can withstand. The weakness of this unnatural measure of strength, the sadness that fills these uncommon portions of endurance. Broken from the outset, this poison does its best to subdue. Beset with these typical demons, I labor towards another bleak extinction. Another day flecked with angels, blood, and graves.