incarnate

All at once you're flesh and bone, spared no ache or spite, harboring all the fields of paradise and the corridors of hell. The brittle cup of undue potency fueling the wild inferno of sentience. You always reach deep into the feeling, always stretch further into the burn. My hands just manifest to your containment. My kisses just so hungry and so hard. You tilt your head, you lean your hips. I fall upon you like blessed night.

This is the spell of distance, the writhing fascination, the incantation kissed with bated breath. These thoughts I write upon the whispers that spill from your fevered lips, this ache that is so overwhelming it's answer is your all. The long lonely nights where my hands can only wander for the want of you. The thick delicious twilight that smolders in your eyes, this flavor of wishes salting each savored breath as you call my name, and I find your answers everywhere you touch.

I write it all down as if a voice could save me. I write it all down as if the words could mean the same. Letters lost to the indifferent systems and brutal efficiency return again to be recoded, my heart my only hieroglyph, your heart my Rosetta stone. These poems that come from the unweaving of this broken ruined world, these ways that linger in the literature while their purpose drains away. This is the blotted parchment and the crabbed and clumsy hand, straining to reach your touch. This is the dream that descends in shadows while you are sleeping to become my waking life.

spiders

The gray winds abound, casting its wild magic upon the dust and trees. I smoke in slow circles, pacing the fissures of old worry, tromping my way through the dirt.  I pause to watch the wires dance, swaying in the limbs above, trailing wild strops of smoke against the back of the sky. A flit from the corner of my seeing eye, I turn to make a spider still, dressed in its shine of startled armor. Limo black and a distressed red, the jumping spider waits to scry my appetites. Am I enemy or am I irrelevant? It moves on, reading me cold.

I couldn't count all the mistakes I made, considering I am usually making new ones with every move and breath. An alarm sounds somewhere in the baffling distance. I listen through the web of songs and dogs, hearing little but the wind. The cigar butt cools in the ashtray. Little measure never even marking the map. The ritual's always the last things we leave. A scrub jay complains from the bones of a chopped-down peach tree. I couldn't even pretend I could claim to disagree.

I pass a web clinging in a corner, a handful of dead peach blossoms scattered like shed spider shells, pausing strange before the sight. They swing and sway upon the lines, held as if in suspense of breath. There is a geometry of intersections, of paths and notions crossed, a sizzling of neurons whispering where sense and surface blend. The idea of distinction so different from its skin. I stray along the paving where the gravel greets the clay, a parapet of outers and inners to pace and grope and claim. The roads are always knotted so tightly, I always have some untying to tell before it's over. The wind walks through me, her secret friend my only absolute.

waste

There never was another reason except that there was a road. There was never any path other than the one downhill. The years went by, the rest went nowhere. Debt and loss and the contempt of everyone around. Madness and tears and all the voices joined, the dismal sound of your own breath another noise needing snuffing.

The confusion makes the fury, and the fury tells the story. Here come the list of wrongs endure, the names of each double crosser. It is even true sometimes, which only adds to every fire, the sadness which you're made from the fuel and the spark. The mind is stuck in litany, unable to refrain from repetition and refrain. Once you think about, it seems silly that you stayed around so long.

You are bruised and covered in cuts and scrapes. Another absurd labor done for rejection, another beating taken to make this case for oblivion. You are old enough to know that you are the reason you won't get better. The sickness just grows until it is all you are, sickness peeping out from the abattoir of your wasted skull. In the end all you are owed is the death you deserve. Sometimes all that is left is to settle up and punch out.

humbled

I need just enough sleep to keep the night out, just enough roof to shit the sky out, that feeling of falling about all I know. The gray day seeps in somehow, the old aches seething straight down to the bones. The hush of tires on the wet road, the nattering of gears in the dark. Every promise plugged into something. Every oath a button pressed. The sirens sound and the dogs let loose. I am staring at the shadows. I am sitting in the dark.

Stared at by the shining eyes of electronics, the world always winding away inside these secrets, the pace kept even while sleeping. Every breath comes back in coughs and sputters. Each leaning some struggle with-in the blood, these glowing screens and comfort noises squeezed from our fingers and our phones. Something falls outside the house, even the walls allowing stunned alarms. Wind chimes peal and the rain comes unsteady. The still house trembles in the weather as winter drains away.

There's no use for your culture heroes. There's no need to drag around ghosts. The world is enough a stranger that it needs no disguises. The truth is harder than horror stories, why deify our brutal aimless deaths? I sleep and wake in fitful stretches and empty stretches, the window open to the alien eyes of the night and the ruckus run amok of the day. I linger here, hunched over a few meager empirical hopes. The words clip clop in dull cliche, fumbling with my thumbs and contexts, always working towards the muddle. Meaning gleaned only after an eternity lost to time. The story told only to hold back all these fallen stars.

nuremburg

The list of crimes goes on and on. It makes it so hard to choose. The light that leaves, the lamp left burning.  The story that never seems to fit. The words just silk between your fingers. The line stitched directly in the skin, read aloud to the cold cruel sky. This is how you meet your maker as he tries to lay you in your grave. This is how you know your place, finding none left for you.

I feel the weight of the absent sun, the press of the sorrow in the walls. My name only written ever in dust. The reasons all me flailing, always a little far from the shore. The lesson my undoing, every stroke more evidence I need erasing. Another room to be lost inside, another door to hold me back. I feel as if I should say your name. I don't know what I am learning.

We are what becomes of justice. We are each of us someone's last laugh. The story never where we left it, while we held our breath the world moved on. Somehow the thought so much the burden, the only thing lost hard the thing that will never be. The days all dust, tomorrows all scattered. The names and numbers the only lie left. The shadows swallow every ache, the sorrow every wonder. Our sentence served interminable, the future too far to follow.

crossed

There is a trick we all endure, moving as we do from place to place, leaving blurry constellations of spittle  and ash at our feet. There is a glint of recognition there in these landscapes we only know from dreams. These wild intuitions, this animal abandon. The maps we make with our mouths and our fingers, the maps we learn inside another's heart. We sweep the path and scatter the ashes. Every day always the one we have just begun.

We are here until we reach the limit, then just as quick we are long gone. The evening shadows reaching towards the street, the setting sun another wager placed, easy money twice as easy when it goes. The shadows stretch in swathes and fingers, grasping every ever-after by the throat. Close your eyes or loose your tongue, in the end all reasons wind up equal. Our time always running down, stars burning into oblivion, sand skittering down the fitted glass. Our time always a bunch of words we gather, and whatever we have right now.

Take my hand and I will lead you. Take my hand, you have nothing left to lose. The blow by blow of each carnival attraction when all you wanted is a home for all your heartache. The dull remittance of every sin when the anguish and the sorrow were your only crimes. The stories they tell you are true enough, and as for worries, legions of them are waiting behind every door. If you pay attention the odds are always against you. Our fates are made already if there is no choice to find. Our crossed stars are right there in the sky. But if the chances are ours to take, why not start with love?

utility

I'm never there until I'm needed so I'm never really there at all. Just the scribbling on an envelope, the press of pretty words. Just the answers to unasked questions and the rigors of the clock. All the rules written to hold dear and clasp tight. All the lies alright as long as we get what we want. Even the reasons they claim are past believing. My life story, and I can't be bothered to show.

There is no try, there is no trust. Everything laid out right there on the table. Every story told just to tell you so. The heart wants and wants with the discipline of a pendulum, the river of blood and the river of tears indistinguishable in this light. Sift through the shards and stir the embers. Someone might speak if the words work out. Someone might begin as if there was still a life.

I will sit and write my letters. I will keep my promised paperwork. The day begins so dull and broken. A life withered down to a husk stirred by bugs and wind. That forever Jack O Lantern feel of always being on the wrong end of your reason, the season seems so cold and dry. Useless, I extend my stay, unwanted and unasked for. I arrive a little too late for exposition, this story only meant to meet its end.

tending to the tide

I wake early, but at least I wake. Dreams slowly drained from the inflamed and confused senses, the drift of self like a symptom of some chronic condition, the weight of identity embarrassingly heavy draped across my limbs. I shuffle into whatever shoes are closest, push through the tangled thrill of dogs into the hallway, to the beacon light of the bathroom to see if my kidneys are still working. I make uncertain water, so very aware of the years pissed away, painful and pitiful and utterly without surprise.

I cough clouds of fitful steam beneath these plots of clouds and stars, familiar constellations lingering on the roof. I stumble with lock and key, pick up whatever paper the morning means today. I scan the street, see where it sleeps and where it is stirring. The stage is slow but full of furtive witness, whether the first early bird of the morning or the last stragglers of the night. I go inside and search for clues of your coming in every place that isn't here. I start my day between wish and ache, wanting you before I have a name.

Somehow the mirror is still there staring. Somehow the sun slips its fingers in, always ready to pour it on. I drink my coffee and I keep my place. The world dances on and on. I teeter on the balance board of utility and ruin, scuffing along this dull calling. Scraping by on the bones cast off by this ravening nation of ghosts and demons, sifting through the stars and words until I get a glimmer of condensation. I mind the ancient proprieties and speak your name out loud. The spell is cast, the die is tossed, I am tending to the tide of all my tomorrows. Every day I choose my poison, always wishing it was you.