midnight and the moment

Midnight, and the moment is honed past sharpness. The moment so polished and so cold, it somehow warms while I watch it closely. It is an intimacy both welcomed and painful, marking myself against dull brick, lit by the nearly infinite. The whipped winds and the rattling pipes, antique pop music and flesh given over to the itching of bite and cut. The labors of spiders and the beauty of this thin slice of a vast decline. I close my eyes, sitting with all my shadows. Such a piece of work is man, and me only more so, only without the excuses and the reasons.

I'd like to add to my addictions, tune and extend them. Bind myself thoroughly to the splintering hull of this particularly broken vessel, dissolve into all manner of smoke and pulp. The burning depths of one drink too many, the delighted salt of another's skin. All this threat and promised dashed like so much bar ware, from clumsy hands to the brutal ends. I would like to lean so hard into the lonely and the hurtful aspects that they seem disappear. Leave all my alibis and diagnosis for some distant star of tomorrow. Leave this husk woven into all manner of wincing attachment. Instead there is this vibrant, warm darkness, this abysmal reach, this glorious defeat. I am awake, either to tend the embers of this fire, or to watch the ashes as they bleed heat into the fluid sky.

I shift on my spine, listen to the bones settle beneath these slabs of livid meat. The clouds roll by, the wind cold and uncaring. This storm leans just close enough to breathe against the glass of my life, a chill mist covering everything I can see. All my wants, all my affectations-- all my needful flickers dowsed so readily. Close enough for whispers, so far that even imagination will never find it. This moment so unburdened, this notion forged from steel. The clock plods on, without even a shoulder to look back over.