the goat

The stretch of day, the pause of darkness. The vetted prayers, the hollow heart. It doesn't matter, that dry click is always there. That fateful plunge into the rollicking tide. That razor whetted smooth and thin. All the worn through remembrances that always call, waiting for the wind to shift. Awaiting all the weight to break.

The eyes can not close, the dreams can not relent. All the choicest epithets slip so easily into the air, yet root so steady in the blood. The sickness is tethered, this self ever the goat, always the offering. It all winds down with the dwindling gray, the too cute blue. Streets slick with rain, steaming in the sun.

There is that name that memory cannot catch, a quickness beset with terror and praise. The weight of the machine impressed upon the soul, the sacrifice undone by the lesson that must be learned again and again. Something has to give. The conflagration of heaven as it devours the world, artless dance of fire and greasy smoke. The empty tomb and the broken slab. This flesh, so livid and ready to rot.