volatile

I need no stick to stir the ashes. I need no spark to burn and burn. The dusk slides along every surface, the dusk sticks to every skin. Every breath mingling smoke and wind, the volatile kinship between fire, air and earth. Every thought skipping along that long slow groove. The song plays all hush and pop, that certain same old tune. Lost between the ocean and that devilish moon.

It isn't as though there wasn't a warning. I knew what words were like long before you ever used them on me. They linger on the lips, some goodbye kiss before rising  on the restless tide of that yonder blue. They bind to our wishes even though the world won't agree, they sink into the potholes, they fill in all the gaps. You speak, and suddenly there are reasons. You speak, and I fall and fall.

The sky huddles up above, the earth unfurls below. The shadows paint the cracked and dirty walls with tree limbs and the unleavened sun. We crawl and we clamber, our ancient blood and deadfall bones. The dread ending always waiting in the wings as we tromp and bleat upon the boards. These dreams the only warnings, these words another kind of bind. Hold my hand, as if you never thought any different. Hold my hand, as if heaven was ours to waste.

ossify

My dreams all live too far away, my days are nearing dust. The world just falls and falls, shadows painting the walls. The bones all woven into place, as if a sign to mark this waste. Read aloud into the ruins, all ambitions ring so false and frail. The gravid breath, the grievous exhalation. The words spill, useless pebbles cast as spells as hearts harden into stone.

The rationale seeps into the tableau, the roots are sated with this sickness. The moon spills out onto the naked pavement, mouths all a-gibber with prayers and curses. All the poems, all the promise saturating the rigid strictures. Structure spelled out in trained tree limbs. Was once never means forever more.

This heart clings to superstition. This heart hopes for the magic implicit in your every touch.  The life inside  congeals in its suspension, the world walks its beat. Dusk comes, humble and weary of all these lovely sights.  I don't speak aloud, so fearful of being heard. I don't ever ask, so certain of your reply. Everything pretends to the rictus of these dull descriptions. I may never speak again.

parity

I can't name the constellations huddled above the house. I can't call down the storm clouds when the weather is a mess. I sift through the wreckage of thought and image, rolling the pieces in whatever words are loose. I stitch  together some story that even I know isn't true, satisfied with the words that stick. I bind the song to its stays, and make up all the rest. It is a marker, and it is a measure, and the distance proves itself all over.

Come plaintive arrangement, come lolling saxophone. The heat spills unhinged across the landscape, melting into the crumbling architecture. The scenery lingers a little too long, the dialogue all trails towards dust. The story pools and seeps. All your spells and recipes bared  all line and light. All your campaign promises, all your starry nights teeth loosed from a bleeding smile. The made up god blesses and the made up muses all rejoice. The story only rocks stacked beside the road.

I can't sort out all your secrets. I can't read the drift from the lightning in your eyes. I work through all the forensic evidence, I trust the figures in the proof. It isn't so much the thing believed but the belief itself I need, a rumor or a reason. A star to hang my wishes on, a trail of sparks to feel out the fire. That flash of eye, that smoke split flint that smolders in your smile. There you are, and all the rest is roads.