seasonal

Cold in the morning, dark in the house. All the animals are practicing their dreaming, rasping and wheezing away. My hands fumble for a pocket, they are fitful, full of cups and keys. I work what locks there are, stepping outside into the cold and glittering morning. Instantly the bones in my hands sing of their familiar complaints, my breath cast in clouds and exasperation. Each hour awake seems earlier and heavier than the last. The day always begins by getting ahead of itself. I am always struggling just to catch up.

Steam from the coffee cup, small comfort brought in these draughts and kisses, the pitiful needy sips craving wakefulness and warmth. I swallow the hot dark coffee, luxuriating in my one extant romance. That confounding of mood and habit, that confusing of stress with joy. I am up early, chasing after the wreckage of my indolence. I am up early, waiting for my day to begin.

I lack the reason of a raccoon, I lack the purpose of a possum. The winter is upon us, and all I do is ache for rain. I abide the idiosyncrasies of the weather, smoking and spilling steam, choking on this sickness, spitting out calamitous verse. I step clumsily through the lives of these abandoned and broken children, my work another example of too much problem addressed with a dollop of solution. I think about the next meal, the next check, old romances and pretty young things. I scribble something down, and make whatever move is ahead.

incognito

I only ask because otherwise there is only silence. I only say because the stars are all sharpened and the weather permits. The slide from each tension all the reason you keep hiding, that slippery ease of that awful fall. Each day stretched tight around you, all cigarette and blindfold. Each day that trick of William Tell, done playing about as Robin Hood. That location traded for speed, that a folding map for the whole wild world. I only ask because I know you will never say.

Once you drew pictures on the wall, once you gave interviews to the mirror. Singing in the shower, the rest of the house grew silent, wrapped around you. The clink of bottles, the brush by the sink. Candles always melting onto the tables and floor. The midnight feel held by your open eyes. The moment where all confessions begin.

I spoke aloud, dropping your name to the wind. I spoke so soft, the wind whistling by. A voice then no voice. A name then nothing. A hot shower, the icy rain. Locks and keys and blunt necessities. The radio and headlights and that sharp, quiet distance between the coming day and the failing night. Aim or not, the arrow flies. Name or not, it will find you there.

antecedent

I stand and stare, backlit on the front porch, shivering, watching the rain. It is all that I can manage, just to find that room to feel. The cold air, the hard rain, the gaps in the traffic, my patchy insistence on remembering. My arms clasped tight across my chest, my breath coiling gray and strange. The rain and my heart keeping poor time, you somehow always almost there, some habit of delirium the only calendar either of us keep for long. Cold fingers drizzled across the keyboard, this dialect that always finds me silent, wanting to sing.

I think of you near the open car window. I think of you in the color of the freeway going by. It rains, I shower, the sun rises or sets. You are in the margins and the liner notes. Each day each thing just trying to find you waiting in the wings. So far away no light can find you. So close that you are never really there.

The storm rolls in, all intensity and arrival. Another night of rain, another chill that will not warm away. These empty aches and painful blushes. Your claim upon my day a flag you dropped without even meaning. Your call through the weave of the wear of the day, your breathless distance as we near another ended night. I write this at this least last hour, another set of fingerprints left drifting about the world. The reason only telling because the rhyme got away.

the blue of the morning, the bright of the moon

All the ordinary entanglements were lost by then, strangers in the forest, footsteps in the rain. I had walked for years in my own wake, wearing out the shape of circles, grinding down my stride. I had followed my own loss so closely I carried that air of completion. I seemed as if I had already spoken every last word. Ask heaven, and all it has are clouds on its face. Ask heaven, and everything is stars in its eyes.

My age caught up with me as I stood too early, a little uneasy without any light. My age caught up with me, just waiting in the road. The chill in the air, the distance in the shine in her eyes, the blue of the morning and the bright of the moon. I feel the shifting of weather with wings, the strained air clapping at the very act of flight. I feel the tilt of the world as the day falls away, calling every clock that will follow. My hands ache in the cool of dusk, pain like dread on fire. My fingers just tap out the count.

The numbers pause, then the numbers tumble. Fingers feel sore just knowing. Eventually accounting is abandoned, another lost faith to fade into myth. The words take the long way, around about the meaning. You ask the sky as if it listened. You ask heaven, and all the rest is listening.

precipitate

The old ones always said they could smell it in the soil, the change in weather, the phrasings of days. Outside, I smoke with cold fingers and a wet cough. I cast a tether towards the menace of darker clouds, coiling with the coming storm. I smell the earth, see the change in the rate of birds feeding startled into flight. The years bury me little by little in the business of the sky. Rain is always waiting, above these whispers and tides.

There is nothing to tell you, not a thing that I can find that you didn't learn of long ago. There is nothing at least that I could say, my language so weary and fraught with abuse. The world has its ways of getting its message across, the fruiting of hidden fungus, the clusters of birds just below the clouds. The world gathers its gossip and its lies and finds me when I stand still enough. I shiver in the flux of weather, the chill and the sunlight, the rush of silence just before the rain. I watch the rain spill towards this idle invite.

It seems like magic, the thought first then the thing. It seems that way as the habits of the world grow familiar, trampling the world with beasts and signs. Wait long enough and the bus will stop. Wait long enough, and most anything is possible. The slight of hand that perception moves us, skipping us ahead of deft sequence, turning the light inside out. Watch long enough, the pattern will play out. Watch near enough, the rain will come the moment you call. This neat end, this fated kiss.

the Christmas card

The air is cold, so let's write down our letters. The sky is gray, so let's settle all our distant wishes with postage and pictures cast out into the winter world. So it is snowmen or baby animals, family pictures or gilded manger scenes. Jesus versus world peace, Santa versus the eskimo. A cardboard sentiment of secular blessings or pious love, our hopes that we can cross the silence damping down our hearts written in slippery ink. The night is dark, so let's try to find some light.

We hold these lists of blood and names, these crisp scraps of kin and time. Childhood friends and second cousins, lovers now married and friends now divorced. From our daily entanglements to our forgotten markers, from those at the table to those outside all our circles, we give what words we may spare. The promise we want to keep to ourselves, that we will never forget.

I grant you all my least binding wishes, those that leave room for any missing details. The dead pets left resting and the troubling rumors overlooked. Our past scrapes and grudges unmentioned as if we all can learn to forget. Our bruises and kisses and all those enduring words. As if there was a love that abides these slips and ruins. As if love was enough to sustain us through all our lapses, through the conspiracies of time and geography. I speak to you of hope like smoke trailing into the distance. Despite these dying fires, I wish you all the best.

the weight of days

The world is contained with a shrug and a shroud, the gray chill settling every bet. Fingers crack and flesh breaks, the work unexceptional and unending. It is that tune that plays on and on, even as you wince and curse. This pale aching moment, the weight of day upon day.

You drive four hundred miles just to fill out a time card. You finally arrive home, only to find new ways to fail. The things as they are written, the things better left unsaid-- they all surface, slow and blunt. No one tells you anything, but you know you are only getting worse. That pot, watched or not, is bound to boil.

It should be enough to say it once. And said a thousand times ought to be enough to get it right. The sickness and the repetition and the frustration and the empty all add up, and soon no one is left listening. Nothing left to say, and still you can't stop talking. The conversation drags on, between you and the dusty walls. The conversation drags on even though you know you need to go.

crawling on

The sun was out, and it was warm for awhile, then it went away. Days are such temporary notions, here one moment then the next they have flown away, leaving the bare line and darkened sky. Everything is crawling on relentlessly, even the bits that stay the same. The bright light, the broken branch, the spider on my leg. The night is here, leaning against the doorframe. The night is here, trying to catch my eye.

What use is a night when all there is is sleeping left? What use is tomorrow when it is only today played in a different key? I try to find the words, but they have burrowed into shelves full of poems and dictionaries. I try to find the words, but for once even my big mouth stays shut. Just a rusted hammer of a man, hanging from some nails. Just a broken bottle of a man, past useful but still dangerous in poorly lit places. All these dull answers, and not a soul left asking.

The moon in the tree a Van Gogh tangle, all silhouette and radiance laid on thick to the eye. The drizzled dreams best left unmentioned, the pretty thoughts barbed in my troubled mind. The chill in the air the nearest thing to a caress I have felt in ages, those absent kisses and kindling romances. The stars in the sky just so many markers, signs to traveler and the very still alike. The night and its stories, the day and its wings.

love as hunger

It is always where I am, this leaning towards the ghost, this empty urgency despite every evidence. Stuck in the stories of the weight of winter as it settles, that chill of drifting years suddenly gaining purchase in my skin. Trapped in the mistake that telling is ever anything given away. Earlier today I claimed I had the hands of a poet. I'm not sure whether I even get the joke.

Sometimes it is the god of the evening news, sometimes it is the god of trees and fevers, pressing through the fabric, possessing common words. The spirit only evident in these deceitful leavings. The ghost only the fearful beauty of the gone already. The kiss that is recorded becomes the kiss on other lips. Memory another invocation, the spell whatever letters are left.

I exist despite my bad grammar and calamitous habits. I exist even though scarce evidence remains to explain. Holding onto the beautiful ache of this crowded lonesome, lingering in the world of disavowal and recitation. I follow the course of the confounded witness. I follow the way of the cranky old man, bitter and resigned to smoke and spit and seethe. Blessed despite the better angels of my nature, I follow the mystery as it fades.

towards your wake

This last dispatch less painted gray than played so slowly all the colors are caught dreaming. This last season all breakers less the beach, the waves without any dry stone do dissolve, the weather without all this talk of rain. I closed the door and locked up all the gates. I slipped into that mood less like gloves and more like water threaded between cold fingers. These words written between pictures, these books still dozing between shelves.

I suppose I always knew your absence, something in the give of a brick or the sway of a tree. Those old scripts, movie musicals in their infancy, Astaire and Rogers sweet and light. I suppose it was often that blissful made up hint, that Easter egg renewal consecrated in the rhythm beneath all this blood. These moments, clinging and beckoning in the very effort of remembering. This longing both sacred and untrue.

Do we ever see each other past these habits, this just me and you? Do we ever know each other beyond the bonds of these easy habits and blunt refusals? Did we dance, or would we ever dance, the music so simple and strong right now. The way the effort eases, lingering on stepping light and sharp. The way the moment presses on and on. You knowing this persistence, the way I always wander towards your wake.

pitch

The storm breaks in cold gray phrases, long apologies and sudden good-byes. The only rain running out of the clotted gutters, drizzling down the eaves. The only wind the breath seeping out between tongue and tooth. Something like relief, audible for just only a moment. Something like a sigh, this evening of slight pressures. The rain seems like a stranger by the end of a few hours. Introduction the only edge left.

I would sleep at the ends of the ocean. I would sleep by the rhythm of breaking tide. Dowsed by the ice of salt and water. Cradled by the wreck of the unseen rocks below. Then maybe the dreams would find me, scattered as so many cold and oily ashes. Then maybe these dreams would want me, where senses would awake. Instead I drift by the trailings of moonlight. Instead I drown in the shadows that abide.

There is a moon lighting the way home in the sky. There is a day fading and a dream alive. To be left like luggage, soaking on the tarmac. To be lost like faith, these chewed bones and sifted shines. Caught here in this enraptured rabbit daze, swaying in the crowded fields. Caught here in the butcher shop silence, immediate and sharp and steel. Something unseen just slips into view, and dissolves like so much winter rain.

that crow loosed

The rain is strung tinsel as the headlights pass through it, the gutters ripple as traffic passes this test. The rain is lost pebbles casting circles as they sink. The rain is a tide of the sky just falling again and again, the dawn some bird seeking refuge on a wire. The day another sojourner, always passing through.

I listen to a pretty song, playing out through trick and trial. Sweet and insistent, passionate and a little forlorn. A little slip of magic, stoppered away in a bottle. A mood to summon and abide, to turn over and over in these soaked through moments. A simple evocation, a delicate hissing of prayer repaired and released into the wilds of time. The song ends, the music changes. The feeling lingers, the last verse diminishing already into the clutter of spent chances. The feeling lingers, the rain pushing through outside.

The day comes, and I should make some coffee. The day is here, and I have nothing prepared. Just these dappled ablutions of rain, these rates of change marked in blue moods and running water. A single crow high above, searching this obsolescence. The crow on its ancient errand, finding some purchase above this tide. The rain falls, and I forget the labors of doves. That day begun, beneath these aimless clouds and flailing rains. That crow loosed, working at rediscovering the world.

theater

A life withdraws, leaving only words to struggle with. The rain exhales, a hush of continuity, the rush of blood always towards rust. The road spits and hisses, the flume of water pressed between it and the air as traffic passes. The light leaves and homes take on their portions of noise and glow. The flitting urgency of birds preparing for a cold wet night, everything measured in hunger, warmth, and shelter. I wait, feeling the latency of mortal notions as the world goes boiling by.

The hours clot, coiled smoke caught beneath the eaves, gnats and mosquitoes following carbon trails and current distresses. The neighborhood heaves its comings and goings, cars idling along the curbside, children running in the rain. The chain-link fence suddenly just another gathering of steel, sieving through the winds and droplets, casting nets into the night. This evening a kind of evidence kept against the tide of forgetting. A letter folded around a photo, a Christmas card cast from across the freezing ocean.

The rain falls in strings and gushes, in smatterings and encores and all the varied measurements of applause. There are no curtains, merely circumstances, stories separated not by subject but by breath. The telling edits, and the prolonged pause, the as if of a love song performed like a funeral march. I while away the weather, wind and heat and signals of smoke. The words subside, leaving only life to go on living.

denial

A few hours with the rain trailing past, the front porch hit with ladles and mists, the cold trying to hide in my bones. In this ache and weather I know you return here, these fitful words, these blurted hesitations. My chilled fingers tangle with key and symbol, the least effort another oddity, old habits hollowed out and filled with new mistakes. All the years and these gathered thousands of miles. You look for me in the smoke and rain.

The day decays into flights and embers, the storm sifting through the wind and sky. Outside I spit and cough, inside shrug and type. For every error an emblem, for every task a tool. I am always missing something at the moment. I am always somehow lost or late. My name arrives, as always, on your lips, and I swear the rain just changed. I hear your voice and I swear no dream is more longed for or bitter-sweet.

Though I am broken, I am certain of another day. Though I am worn clean through, I am certain you see something more. The way you watch the night through sleepless windows, thinking of that season. The way you read so slowly when you think it is you I mean. I almost believe these dull-eyed prayers, writing as it rains in pails. I almost think you are the answer, just because it is all I can do not to ask.

sweep

The stars blur out of focus, a slow adjustment between distances. Clouds drift along the skin of the sky, the weather chained to the bottom of the ocean. These cold sunken hours. The deep forgiving oblivion of the restless tide. Sleep a haunting and a hush, a slipped beating of wings against the window, the shyness of a ghost always just outside the door.

The television spits a dull blue hue, the reflected ripple of light rushing across the water. The room the drowned shine of the surface of a pond at dawn. I am restless in the cold press of this empty waking, the dull riddle of being discovered again. I gather the blankets around my shoulders, breathing a little uneasy. I watch how far the world has sailed. I watch the way the world disappears over the horizon.

The sky is gray, the pavement shining. The wind is slipping along every surface, and all the leaves have fallen to the ground. The gutter is clotted with this shed skin of the season. I turn all the locks and close up the windows. I wander through the house, dowsing every light. I will find my bed and get to dreaming. The sweep of winter across the drift of dreams.

pieces

A piece of the moon stuck to the fleeing of the day, clinging to that last clasp of blue before it all just gives way to black. So many wings, so many hopes bent on escape. These flocks that you would have thought had had the whole fall to settle, at this very late moment remembering the air. These birds that flow and stir, reminding us that heaven is loss delayed.

Later on I am sorting through the papers. Later on the night is near and cold. My cough is wet and the dust has settled. All the scraps and sparrows saved for some further dare. All the days spent littered with worrying after the rain. The things I wrote and the things I will never. The fragile fraction between the word and the breath.

You can find me spattered across the calendar, my name a trail of ink and absence. You can find me in that moment while you wake, your hands wandering and warm. Bits of tinsel and threaded popcorn, that abnormal seasonal shine. I frequent the depth of that dark open window. I crowd the shadows, thinking of you as I dissolve into those myths of sleep. Somehow in your absence, always looking up.

the Jericho road

The truth arose with that music of absolute loss, that dissonant phrase that lays across the tracks of reason. That contrast of the harsh drowse of this painful fluorescence and that static shine falling on the wet white paint. There is that dreadful lamentation framed miniscule, the worm drowning on the pavement, that fly with one torn wing. There is that wakeful stare, realizing that the least frame is versed in its multiples, the always better or always worse. Living is the price that makes us have to hunt this cruelest music, to try to endure or address. The redress of this song the only proof we need.

So I work where I least am able, I try to fix the broken phrase of some natal soul, I try to find the flight in all this fall. Is it only in the repetition of errors? Is it only in the aggregation of blame? I am block and tackle, I am dull matter. I trust in the plans made in idle fury. I serve that aim to reserve and contain, without the least glint of reason. You pick up that huddled man, whatever the risk or whimsy. You win the argument by breaking it into little pieces, and crumbling them in your wake.

There is a line I made out of habits, ardor and languor and watching for the girl next door. There is a line I came to carry, some intersections, some delays. I hold it down for these tired schemes and half-baked theories. I hold it still because some money changed hands. The work I deny, but all that I was ever made for. The kiss held like some rough thumb and forefinger holding you by your lower lip. A surrender to the passion that dresses up like pain. The samaritan limp, that Jericho road.

certainty

The crunch of leaves beneath my feet, the only rush of angel's wings I would ever need. This sky of dark cement. These stars of no more wishing. The nearer the distance, the further this flight. Sleepy enough to feel the wind rise with the sound of drunken kisses. Awake enough to feel the change of light as you leave.

Some other life and some other season, all your reasons just steam leaving your lips. The drift of attachment only a vapor trail from your tongue. These sullen depths of memory that mingle with the change in the light. Of all the stages, of all the players, this is the way the tale untangles. What I missed and what you longed for, that same story at once told and undone. The glow of your smile both beacon and threat.

So comes fall, so wanders winter--. There is a photo, creased and fingered. There is a photo, breathing deep and bright. Once we were lost in sweet weather. Once we were certain in that failing light. A photograph parsed of meaning, a notion that dragged history along in its wake. One picture clung to, to bury all the rest.

red star

The light slowly escapes, sticking to the skins of pale things, saying good-bye to the world. We chill to the dry exaltations of our skins, all existence cauterized by the cold, the profound slowing of the seasons. Winter is coming, crawling down the branches. Winter is coming, trickling from the stars.

I hang my head, idly watching the pavement. The litter of leaf, the edges swept with moss. I smoke absently, wondering at everything I think I miss. This close landscape, this huddle of shadows and smoke, this sense of you in every reckless silhouette. That all waiting would play out, and you would be there trailing wishes. That in this brittle age I would still embrace what was beautiful because it was true.

You flicker in the periphery, a light clinging to the curbside, a shadow cut in half. Winter is the wizard's season, the magic edge that feels honed by ice and death. The dry consistence of this flesh, feeling the wind and the blush of stars sweep you. A notion that holds some tide of sickness at bay. Waiting for the daylight, watching a red star.

anthem

They stitch the meanings together after everything is torn to ribbons. Red for blood, white for death, and that resignation to all that sunken blue. The stars scattered in orderly rows, sharpened in every sense. We love and die and strive towards purpose, in these fecund lyrics that bond us to our world. We hold fast to the certainty that all this clumsy singing can only be blessed.

Used so much all words just come apart. Your confessions of faith, my admissions of sins. A few more words sang too loud, a few more prayers for it all to go wrong. I offer up these worn down oaths, these condensations of beauty. The calamity of the mistaken meaning, the comedy of an endless river of errors. Truth the inevitable outcome taken as a virtue.

The afternoon ending in rake and broom. The slow flow of traffic, the percussion of bristles and cement. Leaf litter pushed down a sidewalk, the work doing nothing but sharpening all the edges, making distinctions my only proof. I trail away, clouds of smoke and gnats an erratic halo of poisoned grace. I settle into the shadows, my song only evident in the little miracles. My anthem a branch dragged behind my absence, a nation furtive and always in decline.

effigy

The veil hides it away until the air is all but gone. These sweet syllables the only fuel ever to find this escape, the dark ocean and the drawled fishing net. The harmless drowning that dreams allow us, sound slipping away as the voice drifts into memory. A tilt of the tongue, a sweeping release of teeth. Such a smile loving mimicry of a bite, that dense pause so urgent and bright. I watch this burlesque of lip and threat, your mouth as you speak of slips and secrets, this treatise to hide and seek.

Whatever is left of this fire, this childhood's first blush of want bound to flesh? Whatever is left of these sweet kindlings, these earnest original sins? The seas sleep, the skies boil, so the story sun after sun. I slow with the lay of the light and the leanings of the earth. I scratch at some long lost thought, some face I only know in the dark. I await the news of the weather, thumbing back your hair, the rain conspiring with the fog outside. Your mouth in silhouette whispering smoke.

It is late and I listen as the music pools around the room, this sinking feeling too little like flight. The itchy skin of the song rubbing against tile and wet cement. That music that spills like broken bricks, time and dust finding their way back home. I can see your smile, adrift in some dark room. I can hear your laugh, less like breath than breathing, a buoyancy built of light. That white respite of that open hearted smile. The revelation of so much bared tooth and bone.

repeat

All my life, this is the broken record of it. The rainbow cut to scraps, the tired drive into another bright good bye of a horizon. The dull plodding litany of curse and kiss, the enumeration of this wrecked alphabet. Love's embers as they dwindle, luck's mercy in hits and misses. The fretting and the fury, and the thousand quiet failures that dot and fleck each day. All this living, and I still have nothing to say.

Something shifts and something settles. The night arrived early, dark as licorice, heavy as stone. I can feel my bones shift, my own weakness the last thing holding me up. I can hear those fallen stars and failed wishes, scratching at the glass. A few more words and I can tumble into bed. Maybe to dream a little. Maybe to sleep at ease.

Spill the words, crib the meanings. Always wearily filling in the margins. Always sullenly littering in the gaps. Some little tension lingering in the language. Some small miracle to be gained from sifting through the ash. Another day gone, staggering towards another weekend. Another sorry note, trying to find something to remember. I know I long ago wore out my welcome. The rest of this is only trying to find the rest.

one little song

It was like hellfire painted in cold orange juice hues, drizzling down the back of my throat. It was like that griddle black iron hiss that is only fire finding flesh, the scent of burnt blood so sweetly near your breath. Those artless feelings that can only be told as heat. That last sacramental miracle, the body turned to meat. The way I felt you, leaving like a song.

The music so far at last, every single light seems a new horizon. SInging being breathing and breathing being so soft and slow. Your name always that leaving tingling, drifting slowly from my dry lips. Your name some dark evocation of want and glorious waste. Time always gathering down your ankles as the world washes through your hair. This song destiny, always almost lost.

You sang so sweet, sugared sand in my dreams. You drawled and intoned and upended all the furnishings words could afford. Even the drift of your singing, like heard from around a corner, draws closer to my fingers. Your throat purring warmth through my hands. Knowing that there is no cold you could not thaw, just with a word. One song spilling slowing, leaving your kiss.

conjure

It is a season laden with tinsel, built on colored lights and expectation. The day turns darker, from unduly bright to uncommonly gray in the time it takes to frame a thought or buy an alibi. I rise from the mud and detritus, my work lingering a little in the dirt this morning, staggered and feeling the shifting of worlds. My feet find their purchase on kitchen floors and basketball courts, and work is the tracing of familiar forms as if they were fresh and new. Child's play and all the gristle of the discarded and the abandoned, heaps of indignity and disappointment served in generously cruel amounts. I find the time to watch the sky as clouds crawl and idle. I find the time to think of you.

I still expect to see your eyes, to hear your voice in these colder moments. I could measure every livid detail of you, eyes shut and left to my own means. I conjure you from strange remainders and the dust that rises when something settled in suddenly gone. I conjure you from bad days and and dismal notions, from the gun metal gray flavor that hijacks my tongue, from the lonesome purchase of another cement step keeping company with the rain and the crows. It feels close enough to real to remind me of the fixed distances and the broken light. It feels close enough to be the mark left on my heart from all this missing.

The day folds and the night chases its tail. The heavens clamber and crumble, every light left submerged beneath the surface of the sky. I settle into the fuzz of other places, the soft hum of electric imitation. Some song left on from another life, something on tv to tell me how wrong I live. I will sleep in the hush and chill of another night without you, restless only in these thoughts of your absence. I think of all the things to tell you, of all the things we would do. I slow into silence, into the gnawing empty of the world I know.

that magic thought

It is at that moment, when time catches up to memory, when the song comes undone at each syllable. It is right then when the hour slips from the glass, where the clock spills its arms into the night. There are tremblings and there are kisses. There are wishes that were spent on stars. Every spark and sputter, the clutter of another evening alone.

I don't wait until the bridge to start its burning. I don't divvy my day into such fine a slice in thousands. I take the measure, I swallow my dose of dust and screams. There won't be one and so can never find another. There were so many, and now that they are gone, just a single flock. I would write it all down, had you skin enough on your back. I would write it all down, were you near for an instant.

I thought I had settled on the dish of no tomorrows, that bowl of longing snuffed, of ashes cast in smoke. I thought I was left without any other means for an end. Writing down wishes in the cold crisp sky. Reading all these fortunes from this shy smattering of stars. That notion cast from the skimming of breath as steam, trailing on behind me in the night. That magic thought left that there could still be surprise.

annulment

It is just that there was this rain, falling so softly, there before the out of focus Christmas lights. The rain falling in such a hush, waiting breathless to confess. Then, as if created right there, a mosquito materializes, rising slowly towards the sky like it was my soul set loose. And something in the idea spoils slowly, under heat and ponder. Something in the moment boils away, giving off the steam the clock spilling over, trailing vapor into the next uncertain proof.

There in the doorway I sniff and cough, feeling the tilt of some virus in the lilt and tongue of each word. I spit into the fresh falling rain, as if to absolve my every stain. My thoughts so weary from their wanders, pacing the widths of distance, groping the intimacies of flesh. My mind so far past dreaming everything is brittle and real. I try to stretch an ache from my hip and spine, swallow out of idiot habit, curl a smile out of spite. The rain streaks in shades of gray, haloing the street lights, blazing away at the eaves of every house I see. The night sizzles softly along.

These nights are thick with you, you glisten on my every thought, you are drenched in lust and sacrament. Blood that turns to breath, breath smoking slowly into steam, rising and so very true. We dissolve over reach and time, our every intention some wave that breaks the surface, a needle scratching away the skin. We slowly become just the dopplered blur of an instance rippling through the measure of its ending. The wrecked train, the ruined photo, our natures so divided they might as well be the same.

the adoration of the lamb

I would still take your hand, with everything hidden now cluttering the table. I would still listen, through the dark tatters of your whispers, through the confessions so hurtful and true. The weather slides, the cloud circle. The song that plays on steams on just beneath all the skin and scars, and it is always alright to lean away. The song rolls and writhes, all those secrets so many carcinogens breathed in on accident, released boiling through your words. I suspend my hesitations, so many embers caught in mid-air, so many wings finally finding the will to roost. That is all the art I have.

The reverence mingles with the medium, the tense of heaven all angels and script. The reasoned oils another mirror, catching old stories in amber, casting creation in glistening skins and smoky robes. There are creases and veins of commerce, subtle revelations of that frenzied intersection, that ocean of culture and translated blood. The lamb so still upon a clumsy pedestal, the dove another pillar flickering in the firmament. The trickle of fountains, the trick rope image of paradise leavening the paint. Everything should be so tainted with the grace of age.

Here is where I will say you should slow towards the earth and season. Here is where I will leave these clumsy seductions of the glass always emptying when the thirst is so pronounced. That this would change the chill in the air, or brush a palm upon your cheek. That this would find you in that suspense of flesh and telling, reading with passion again and again. The lines so sparse and laden with the taste of rain and pavement that it would dissolve with the purpose on your breath. That silence seeming so painfully long and overdue.

the mood

It wasn't the wind, swift and cold and indifferent to the dancing of dead leaves that spun and skipped down the sky. It wasn't the rain, which nudged and groped and kissed the skin of the long gone night. It wasn't the say or the season, the drift of conversation, the winter in the blood. I am far past the camouflage of reasons when it comes to these seeping blues, these crawling grays that spill out from eyes left open, from dreams that never end right. I am gone from the stories I once wore about arrival and antecedent. The mood had me, and there was little left of me to kibitz or display. The mood drove every moment, it colored in each unfortunate word.

Tonight isn't so different. I long for the rain, I watch the shadows grow until they are all that are left. I smoke on the porch, I talk on the phone, I lose my place and am careless with my tongue. I watch the traffic doppler by, the headlights long and drawn out or short and sharp. I am sad by habit, alone by the usual processes. A sweet song plays, and I smile a little, and tear up a little more. The mood is its own measure, it is paint and canvas whatever I think the subject might be.

My bones ache along the ley lines of wear and design. Maybe a symptom, maybe the season, maybe one song too many that calls and pulls inside and out. This world is too deep and too wide for me to figure, all these waters too close to distinguish a claim or cause. I wear the same skin though it is worn and damaged, the same shape though I can not find a use or a way. The day before is already in the dust, every prophecy already writhing with worms. The day to come already fashioned, and yet still a mystery to me. The mood both a sentence and a seance upon my soul.

covenant

We forgot the terms, the day was so long. We forgot how we came to this agreement, the days ground down, the night slippery with wings. We spill the salt, we tilt the snifter. We find this flesh has grown too snug. Luck always the one that got away. The street as it stills with rain.

The clocks slows, the longer the hour. It is the distance that we remit, the signature at the long drawn end of the contract, that snap judgement that ink runs truer than blood. The word is the bond, and still the speech so vague. What is a wish than the martyrdom of risk? What is tomorrow but the chance of suspicious habit? I write it down, though I won't waste my breath on reading it aloud.

I wasn't there when they drew up the papers. I never got around to finding out about the fine print. And I never sign my name right twice. The dreams are lost before the night is gone. The deal was broke before it was even whispered. The busted wings soiling the gutters. The light so dazzling when you realize first tomorrow can not come. The last daylight finding perhaps the last day, knowing for a moment that I didn't miss one thing.

limits

There was a golden sky, blinding in the horizon, shining above the green hills of the coming winter. There was a color so radiant my eyes lost their station, unable to see past this heart-broken hue. The road was subtle and a little sad, despite the press of traffic and the rush of wind. The day dwindled, again so sweet, so far. The lights changed, the other drivers sped on or idled, the freeway left so far behind. My engine coughed, my radio blared, and the flocks all took to the skies. There was something missing, as there is always something missing. That something was mostly me.

I live along that too sharp edge, that too piercing point. I live in the crush and fumble of careless lives, intimate and alien, in a funk and a fury that are all but inexplicable outside my skull. There is a cruel conversion that does not allow me to hold onto the better portions I am allowed, the sadness of a dry-clicked trigger, of the hammer striking the hollow chamber of the missing shell. There is a cumulous of busted culture gathered inside me, spinning fragments all akimbo, making shards of my thoughts and hauntings. Endurance is often bumping up against its limits.

There is beauty abounding. Charms and gimmicks and magic tricks to delight and amuse, shorn remedy for so much poison and error. The heart would break, it is so gorgeous and unlikely. Chances are some little thing you did today would move me to tears. Chances are that there is never enough weeping in this sad and lovely world. Darkness embraced less like love and more like contention. Living is this way sometimes. Some little piece that broke off, a flower or a stone. Some small treasure left for a stranger to discover.