we will never know

I bring to the table a poverty of expression, a tongue lathered with lies and shredded by the insolence of broken teeth. The broken boards of language, discarded in the dirt, stacked by the rat-claimed wreckage of the pressed metal shed. Every slip, every swallow, every single glimmer of sincerity another stone skipped into the inclement depths. Empty out the pockets, buy whatever a handful of change and lint can manage. Promise a flower from this tangle of weeds, promise a poem from these kindling scraps and fleeting breaths.

The icy wind has whittled away the storm, left its flayed flesh hanging in motley strips from the lichened limbs of spring minded trees. A storm dried to jerky, a storm mummified in small measures. The wind saps the strength from duty, it parches glib throats, stills the tongue of the unbirthed epics we will never know. The shell of this world grown bitter and brittle, dappled with gray clouds, dowsed with the bright blue certainty of the flailing sky. Our failings so shovel ready, plated so precious you could eat them with a spoon.

Laden the sands with the sparse promise of flowers, the colors bent towards spectrum we can not see, all these lovely shapes and perfumes built to seduce libidinous insects and the occasional bat or bird. Pummel the clay with pick and spade, shape the soil after whim and wanton delight. The egregious assaults wound us formally, but the small losses seem bruise pretty, even sweet. The slipped grip of fortune, the story falling prey to the usual second act foils, loves ministrations suddenly nothing but proof of some ghastly pantomime. We are not what we once were. We never were. So goes the pattern of these words spat out at the first featherings of dusk. The burdens shed that weighed nothing all along.