preternatural

The story unwinds as the day unravels, the road before you and the sky high tomorrow. I ride out the twitch and twine of my ragged nerves cutting back the shrubs and reasoning the deadfall into piles. This passive spell of thoughts unspoken, the sand in my honey, the bitter in my sweet. The words that well with-in my heart, despite all the chips you have anted, despite all the skin you put into the game. The strange feeling at you are some prayer answered, though I don't think that there is anyone on the line. The odd notion that our entanglement is fated, though I don't particularly believe in fate.

And so the rush of proselytizers, the hocus pocus omen huggers to attribute deeds to their incomprehensible mystery wizards. So comes the claims the claims for invisible intercessors, spirits, and all-gods. The meaning gleaned from the winning streak. The divine seen  in favor granted or enemy's demise. The hordes of statistics, the hives of numbers busted open and a-swarm. The way incidents branch and peel as we cast our gaze back towards beginnings. The way the truth seems obvious when you are so certain it has been revealed. I can look to the sky and be certain that there are things there I can not see. But there is no proof inherent in my lack of sight.

Still, as you travel towards me in this space and time, it feels as though we are. meant to be together. As you come to me in all your beauty and your glory, as you come to me despite my failures and my flaws, there is a magic of blood and want and coincidence that I must honor even as I think I know better. While the winds run wild and the dust kicks and swirls, I feel my heart seethe with wishes. All these silly stories I want for my very own. I offer you every indulgence, each bite and every morsel of this yearning meat I am. I offer you all my tomorrows, knowing full well the doom at most likely entails. Knowing that my words ring hollow even towards your heart, I sing out my empty prayers, though I must most likely answer them on my own.

namesake

The world was full of wanderers, the world was full of wars. They killed their kings, they killed their conscience. The streets shook with screams and tears. The cities broke and burned. Amid this chaos, some human resolution. Among these crises, the usual human work. From the striving and the fleeting feelings, from the nature of the beast, you were birthed. All the tears and frustrations yet to follow. Every failure yet to unfold.

The names entangled the buried blood lines, the seeds sown of sunder, those reaped of unseemly war. You wore the mark upon your mien, no name used ever truly yours. Born and cherished amid all the usual hopes, you spent years unravelling wrong and broken. You bruised each heart that held themselves open, you beat the hinges off of every door opened for you through labor and grace.  You earned contempt and mastered its wielding. You seldom even bothered not to fail.

Time burned on like all those bridges. The years fell away like leaf and limb. The grave swallowed each namesake, every hope carried for you left beaten and bleeding out. Sometimes you were a monster, sometimes you only wrecked them, beating down terror and hero as you would all faith and love. Now enfeebled by spells and sickness, your heart choked with worm and maggot, death upon you every day. You weep for dreams and fiction, you cry for each mistook road. Your enemies peering in your windows, debtors gathered by your door. You swallow another bitter dose, ache and bleed away each aimless day. Your life all roil and rumor, you at long last measured up to the nothing of your name.

rain dogs

The sky kicks up it's heels and we all hold our breath. The swing and sway of the pines a ritual in keeping time. The music of the wind that spills, the reckoned roiling of the dark-eyed clouds. The dogs set upon each other, kicking up the dust. The rain is waiting in heaven up above. The rain is always just a prayer's breadth away.

I pace the yard in lamentation, I pace the fences in my mendicant crawl. Begging yet again for these pennies from heaven. The tin pan alley feel of this thirst for rain. My rags and creep suggest my station, my voice and visage hint at some fall. There is but dirt and desolation, footsteps making prints as transient as this humbled flesh. The sky full of clouds and winds and the gliding wonder of these prurient birds, what gods there may be having long gone home to roost. The dogs dash and snuffle, pacing out our compact as I spin my tender spells. A blackberry bush snags my bare ankle, some small sacrifice unintended in these shiny beads of blood.

The day aches on, yet the rain won't fall. The ley lines just lied there, the dance of branch and dust another whirl, the invocation evoking only flies and spiders. Arthropods and other ectotherms as unsettled as the sky. The sun sweeps the trees in some failed gesture, consolation and condolence so easily confused. I move my lighter to an empty pocket, empty my ashtray for some future fire. Today will bleed out until tomorrow wears its sovereign flesh, my scratches and wounds scabbed over with dirt and forgetfulness. The wind pitches hard and long, sending trees a-sway and leaf a-skitter. The dogs settle down as the air cools its head, intent another name for imagination. Will a word fixed in the mind, a polestar for some settled telling. The rain is in the air, but it won't reach me. Absolution so readily mistook for absolution, blood shed mistaken for a meaning beyond the bleed.

in the dark

It is the way the world moves, without a prayer or purpose. It is the way the world seethes, the crawling and reaching of ten trillion appetites. I shift my sights, I hold your gaze. I think I see just what you say. You move near, you move away. You speak in tempered truths. My heart hangs on these rusted hinges, my heart beats against the boards. You do your tricks, you take your time. I am still here in the dark.

There are clear deeds, there are sacrifices. There is sunlight in your smile, halos in your hair. You are the latest incarnation of this old and weary faith, the strife of want and swell, the swollen dawn, the fleeting light. I love you now as I will love you after. I will love you to the end. These borrowed days and empty nights, the breach and ruin and rupture. I cling to each proclamation, I hold on to the bones of this hope. All the stars are out there, water beading on your skin. The words spill like ravenous kisses, the words spill like any other rush of breath. All I can do is listen.

I am rags and I am rot. There is nothing to me come tomorrow. I am lost to prophecy, out to sea without a beautiful pea green boat. The lights burn bright, then they flicker. Sadness wells as the shadows devour. I am the warm breath whispering against your neck. I am the wish for kisses, so sweet and full and passionate. I speak softly as you drift from skin to skin and dream to dream. Words weighed from this lost apostasy. The windows open and all shine extinguished. I cling to you for incarnation, knowing that all my flesh is failure. I cling to you as this darkness leaves me lost.

the secrets of the sea

The leaf is caught on the tide of the sky, dashed against a sea of green treetops, lost amid these streets and fields. I count the hours, I count the miles, the dull report of the mystery you seem to cherish most. The light that clings, the light that clashes, the light that rises from somewhere within. Your eyes aglow with that hidden fire, burning away my reasons and my will. The secrets you keep so you know how this all ends.

The years steal by with swift abandon. The days they linger like stones beneath a stream. Bright and dull, lusterous or sodden, the weigh beneath this consciousness. Reasons turn out to be excuses, beliefs turn into alibis. Words wind up next to useless when they can only carry you to someone's door. No amount of knocking can guaranty they will admittance. No amount of talking can tell another so.

The wanderer learns to read the weather. The mendicant learns to see through hearts. The apostate flits from branch to branch, each perch alerting all to the revelation of its latest truth. You learn too young to hide the things that everyone can see, your secrets a story you hide to fool yourself. The tide is wild, the tide is gentle. The waves may lift you up and bear you safely, the wave may break you upon the ruthless rocks. You love with all the abandon of fire, taking it with you with every touch. I love as one who knows the many ways a heart will shatter, knowing so few ways to make it mend.

blue ice

The ice rings out as the glass perspires, desperate shadows flung from the TV light. All the ghosts have gone to their graves, their dead hearts the sound of footsteps leaving. The street outside the window so busy and dark. The moths beat out the essential rhythm. The light left on is all that's waiting. The song that says she's coming home.

It isn't hot, but the heat is out there. It sticks in the shadows as hungry as a spider. The tires brush by singing like a river. Somewhere the music finds the heart it needs. The memories crowd like worried horses, all sweat and muscle and the twitch of panic pressing on the gates. The longing fills the empty hallways. It hangs in the cobwebs around the doors.

The ice is gone, the glass all empty. The TV mutters in thrills and wan delights. The voices carry though no-one's speaking. The haunted hearts that glut the night.  The clock grinds on as traffic's passing. The porch light burns its dull refrain, dusty wings fluttering against the bulb. The stars are there but no-one sees them. The distance is rich with her absence. The light left on the one belief. The switch flipped once the most expensive. Hope is momentum, she must come home.

gone with heaven

The day arrives an awful blur of bent shadows and dirty windows. The wind makes shapes in the shadows on the wall. I wake without warning to the absence of her call. I wonder what color I am painted if I'm never seen at all. The glories that abide in passing, the intractable kindnesses that can not endure. I cast myself against the light, blinded by it day or night.

Yet she calls, and I endure these vast slabs of sorrow, these ages of accumulated ache. Her gracious touch rings down through my bones, it sounds bells from the blue firmament. She heals the tatters of my mind with gentle kisses, holds me gently with implacable resolve. I love her past all these letters and balcony scenes, and her love is a mighty tide that carries me back to shore. It is that line from Roethke that clings to her in my mind, "she moves and I adore." She thrives in my mind like rhyme, her kisses I feel in my heart like Neruda's ocarina. She brings hope like fire to this bleak and bitter world.

Oh the ways I am defeated, oh the course of fallen stars. The spark as if the lamp of heaven, then the burning down the abyssal path. The clockwork truths at you deem clever only the wheels that turn as is their wont. The prayerbook alibis only golden in your guilty eyes. She shifts the play, she changes the balance. Would she redeem these chips and fragments, piece my heart as whole again? I love her from beneath the rubble of disaster after disaster shaped by my heavy hands. The broken roads and burned bridges, the rails that no craft will ever wright again. I love her from amid my ruins, though I am wrecked, and still less each day. I will follow her star until it is gone with heaven. Then I will follow its memory until the darkness is all.