missing

These hands need something, so I smoke for a while. I scatter my ashes into the wind, I follow my footsteps in small circles, everything caught up in the dance that is missing. Everything counting on the song that went missing long before I woke. The branches flail and lash,  the dust stands upon its hind legs and does another jig.  The shadows flood and gush, every tide another moment awaiting retreat. I take a picture, as if that was how long it lasts.

The world sheds its skin, the words come rushing in. The old tricks sticking to the tenor of the air, the rush of thunder and the crush of atmosphere. Tomorrow and tomorrow and that host of ghosts and specters. My empty hands and a hole in me that will never close. This romance already straining at the seams, written kisses left for careless lips. This life of mistakes and the mistaken thought that this broken vessel can hold the solution to itself. The winds go wild-- I wonder in blood and bone.

These hands are idle, though the devil gets the day off. The sky boils and rages, the weather my only witness, the weather my only guide. I sift through the words I use and the words that use me, never finding blanks, always using the margins of some other conversation. I speak aloud to the beasts and the birds, singing my father's song of lonesome days and empty glasses. There is no mark, there is no measure. Your softened sentiments a symptom, my sharpened blade a sickness. I take a picture, because that is how quick it goes.