the ridge-line and the rail

Every new day, it is the same old thing with me. I ink my thoughts in ashes, I paint my mind lacquer black and set it out to dry.  Something fought or sang or drank in rounds. Something learned beneath the cover of night and tree. The limits of illumination, the monsters that await just out of sight. A quick relief of sadness and consternation. Every prayer choking on the dust and following the river. A way an intention worn out of doors. Each soul owing its substance to distant heaven. Each shadow pressed from some endurance of the sun.

Oh, and how the wheels spin. Oh, and how the flags unfurl. The wind revealing the only wisdom, change the very flesh of existence. The sun beats down on the back of my bald head. My eyes struggle with age and dust and light. The birds have all but plucked the vines clean of bitter green grapes. The dogs make further discoveries, digging at breach and root. I am silt in the stream. I am the broken string missing the true note. I carve my message into the blunt electric vacancies, I make my message from the charred interment of blood and bones. Every slaughter always something's feast. Every lapse the measure of some other.

I suffer from the usual suspect ideologies and the typical infernal weakness. Heaven and hell have already been allowed too great a say. Now high on the ridge-line of the next dark age, I hide what flames I render. A curl of smoke climbing up the tree limb, a tiny spark hidden behind my hand. I abide the habitual ideation, that flavor of gun metal measured with the sudden searing of my own flesh. That feeling like an echo of my long and dreary incarnation, the hollow place that can not be filled by god or love or labor, just the abrupt punctuation of a flash of powder and a slug of tungsten. The murder of all intention, that leaning over the flimsy railing. That insurmountable obstacle to all that I would or wish, these idle words laying graven upon all this bright and bounty. Every flight of fancy repurposed from this mouth full of mortal oaths and failing light.