grayscale

Not that this is any secret, but things don't always go the way they were planned. The best laid plans and the God that always laughs. The prophecy that is always about to come true. The lights are on and the road is always open. The smile that arises to remind you of the reasons for teeth. How the day changes, how the heart soars and sinks. Still we speak of reasons. We stack phenomena and happenstance, and remark on how mysterious are the works and the ways. The years pass in droughts, the rain runs in rivers. Tell us again of the kingdom we can't find.

Our minds all wind through the same long wander. Our blood flows from the same ancient oceans, our stories all lapping at that long forgotten shore. We guess intent and see wheels turning, even though the only stirring is the wind. We stalk secrets where we would hide them, see ourselves in every maker's mirror. All these puzzles and these mysteries imagined, the problems we make by thinking that our thinking makes the models true. All the colors that resonate a song of fecund light. Dusk comes and the colors flee our sight. Gray shadows swallow every skin.

At long last the rain has come. The sky drips and pisses, the gutters burble and flow. The season begins to rock itself to sleep, and the crowds all gather and cling. I watch while the skies empty and the streets fill. I settle in against the sharp-toothed wind and the ways that elude me. The season of the blood bound and the celebrant. The world we wrecked and the life I ruined. All these stories that play at reasons. All these questions they had answered before they were asked. The sun goes down and I am the same shade as every other thing. I am painted in absence like the rocks and the rain. I am just another question answering itself.

departure

The miracles we abide diminish as we take to the sky, the scars of highways, the wreaths of flickering lights. The voices narrow as our words cling to steel and glass. We rise and enter the anonymity of transience, another set of lights sliding across the night, another shape to blot and blur the stars. We pass above our insistent settlements, these beads of home and struggle and urgent traffic. We pass into charts and schedules, a people bound by direction. A tribe bound only by the skin in the game.

So you pass into the meat of memory. So you fade into a ghost in the veins. The thought of you a faded captive. A voice left out to ring in the rain. Another dream amid the calamity of passage. Coughs and elbows, all these strangers speaking at once. Another hope aloft as the world slips away.

This is all the rind of language, the moment held like a breath on the page. Another animal condensed into a set of symbols. Another voice left to mark some stranger's eyes. The place I was, the name I answered. The drift of days and limbs and sheets. The evidence gathered by my absence. The words that will fill the world I left.

rhyming on the inside

Things are always spilling over, meaning bleeding like feelings from the flesh. We scuff and scrape and smudge everything we touch, cryptic sworls the signatures of our busy fingers. Boundaries broken, borders crossed, everything seemingly immune to our habits of specificity, save the ideas we cling to with all the mad fervor of our faiths. All these fears and wishes paint our every brush. There is always more within us than we can contain. We are poor vessels that set forth leaking all about the world, then declare how much of the world is wet.

The feelings will not abate. We are this weave of stone and dream, the resonance of the instrument, the page when graced with ink. We write that it is written, never even slowing for the joke. This world always seething with our senses, the song so familiar because it must be recognized to be sung. The knots in our logic, the loopholes where we bind the spell, these limits we can never see. So close the reasons cling, enfolding what I may know, yet still so sure of my love. You are where all I want and the world intersect.

This is the measure of the magic, the slight shift of tense, the way my breath glistens against your skin. The sudden spill of probability, the ubiquitous aligning of the cosmic such and such. The casual spell of being just in time gathering at every sense. Love so fast and certain it seems sure to be a trick. A sign of the times or a fire in the mind. It is distant until it is upon you, and then it wears you as its skin. This chill calling gooseflesh so swift upon you, it feels as if touched by a ghost you always knew was there. These lips folding words, these fingers holding tight.

word by word

There is nothing but the body behind this sheen of self. This compound of trillions of seperate trusts,  chemistry and the usual concussed thoughts. The seething of the ancients, marrow mouthing the sounds of all the gods and ghosts, moving my lips as if they had a choice. The ruined country of my own invention, words left lying all over the page. All joy, all sorrow the staved in skull of freedom. Smiling with the teeth of ground gears, weeping with the tears of clockwork I write out my lists and plans. Unproven claims of exception, the sunken stone thrown so close to reason. The soul of poetry just another affliction.

I am the child of indolence and ineptitude. I am the words unfurled from tears. The welcome worn, the miles wandered. The cage of inaction and the course of history. My mind now weak, my body a shambles, and still I cling to this empty name and direction. The sour stomach and the hungry heart. The blessed bitter taste that lingers in every single thing I say. The way the world moves on, however wrecked or broken. The words released, as if they were ever held at all.

It is early here. It is even earlier where I am from. Here the morning sieves through the poplars, not the pines. Here the dreams are run aground before sleep even has the chance to fail me. The words ignore the hiss of my breath and the sputter of my heart, the hum of my blood another symptom of this afflicted legion. The ache and sadness just so much dissention in the ranks. This drooling, seeping, barking meat coddling his last conceit. I wake to find each wound waiting, the price of this subtle magic greater every day. I wake to find the loss I always arrive at watching for the first spilled tear. One word then another, the plaintive tone, the want of grace. It is the disease that documents each last poem as it breaks me word by word.

insufficiency

I pace the earth like always, worn-through shoes and worn-out bones. I drag my shadow through the dust. Flies light on my limbs as I still them. The world escapes me when I pause. The loosed arrow, the haunted hall. The weight of the sun burning at my flesh. Aimless, I scuff my soles away on the pavement. A lost child too used to the wild myths spun by the heart. A fool driven by flashing teeth to fall from the edge of creation. Everything flight until it isn't.

The brittle needles and the pine limbs sweep the ground with shadows. The wind leaps and pauses, giving life to dust and smoke. The heart wants to beat and breathe through all this ache. The press of heat, the push of this reckless fusion. The blue of a sky so full of birds, the breeze creased by wings and need. Another brutal summer as gentle as a kiss. Another brutal season, made painful by this broken witness. There are no reasons as the trees sway and bow.

This is the fever as it wakes the fleah. This is sickness as it earns its stripes. Every sup, every morsel turns to ashes in my mouth. Every blessing, every bounty is weighed against the crackling of my poisoned heart. It is a habit of madness. It is a choice made of bolts and blood. I seethe and spit, all the beauty of this wide old world an accumulation of dust. Another waking into this failed flesh. Another dawn coming down the lane, the sun as blameless and bright as any beloved child. The day breaks in waves. 

structure

The wind unwinds, slipping on the skin of the sky. The plane trembles as it ascends, a silver cypher, a spark in scattered clouds. From tarmac to heaven, the rumble of this miracle of bouyant metal, this husk of wait and wonder. The pressure leaves the inner-ear, the lit window burns with the ache of unalloyed light. We climb, rising like the lucid moon. We climb, like the bounty of summer stars. We cling to constellations, skim the skin of this sea of mountainous clouds as we cling to the seams of the world. We rise until we shine.

We are dull and we are ungracious. We sneer and scoff at the miracles we unfurl. We ride the sky, we court the wind. The words come loose in our greedy mouths. Give me more light, give me a longer lever. Our intransigent hearts beating time with their hard heads against the hollows of our ribs. Each repast we judge against our dreams and not our hunger. To always want, ever empty, ever fasting on the glut and ruckus of our insatiable wounds. We are made of holes and wells. We are the howl of the forgotten engine, this suspension of mass before the subtle fold of metal and the wild riot of so much thrust. We are the plan abandoned for the mapped out treasure of our half dreaming desires.

Night falls and we bend the sky above the sphere. Cities stretch and sprawl, the shimmering fire of other lives. I am a song, I am a stone, I am the ghost of a crow that cooled in my hands so many years ago, its precious lifeblood sticky on my open palms. More wreck than right, more loss than art. Here in this contrivence of love and lore I sift through these moments of sharp surprise, my heart heavy rememebering my belly sore with glee. The great clown has passed, his heart stilled, all his days gone to the past and shorn towards never more. We build against the breakage, wings trembling like the touch of a lover, hands pressed wide and firm against the barest intentions of the air. I feel the tears as they well, the way the words take and give all at once. My window open to the world below, my life yet another light passing in someone else's lovely night.

all the stars

All the stars have gone away, every wish is lost. The sky sheds its shifting skin, spilling wind and shadow. The whole world turns brittle blue and pavement gray, the dark yard rustles and wakes. Everything is dogs and traffic, hollow words and headlights. The last embers glow as the smoke gutters and all hope dies. Love lingers, a bitter remainder, bright reminder of the once you were.

The room shines low, the songs shuffle and low. So many summers lost to wander vacant lots and jittery streets. So many seasons wasted while the skin slips away. Sunlight still beating inside your reddened flesh, that dance of daylight in deep clear water now pictures in a book behind your eyes. Word after word, and nothing ventured. The blood stipples the page, the ink bruise black on every line.

I would pray if there was the least hint of smolder. I would cry if the tears were worth their salt. Ghosts gather and grumble, every loss arrive at once. Every failing takes wing to come home to roost. I am alone in the darkness of my own invention. I am alone in the hollow light of a single bulb. Nothing sings, nothing stays. I sit still in the ravening night, watching as the shadows swallow me whole.

skin and bones

The day is bright, the light relentless and starved of reflective flesh. So the day rises, so the sun spills, hungry dust and flesh beaded in sweat and heat. The crows vocalize in some other sky, while flies warm themselves on your every limb. The music tumbles beneath the surface, delving into the dark corners and sticky shadows of your restless mind. All the words, all the wings, still nothing is held aloft by this relentless tide. Each way, each wish, arrives already buried, all hope stolen or murdered before your eyes. Like you, the light is there to be lost.

The wings sweep the sky, the shadows stick and swell. The heat sinks into your flesh, and you steam and pool and glisten. Your face a painted mask of dust and sweat. All this effort for the ache in every bone. All this effort for this heart that blurts and sputters. You work at it, this aimless pantomime of sacrifice. You work hard to hold fast to all this empty.

Cry for all your waste and wander. Weep for the tireless pace of all this blood. Stay the night with your prayers and spells of rote convenience. Follow the vein to the troubled source. All these hopes for love and comfort movies playing in an abandoned theater. You jostle the crowds of skin and bones that there might be a path to follow. Your thoughts clotted with shards and rust, you wipe away the maps and prizes. Your mouth full of promises no-one cares if you keep, the day burns down around you.

ideation

There is the day, there are the words, there are the systems and the senses. The vacant school field dripping with sprinklers, the mocking birds scolding the cat in the grapes. The feel and the phrasing and the world always so much the same, yet the sickness grows. Blue skies and fair weather, yet my mood is in the wind. The old call to violence over these fresh new failings, the urge towards self slaughter forever in the wings. My whole life an inability to reconcile my wants with reality. This dull relentless longing for a bullet to baptize the wall with my brains.

There is dust on my tongue, there are stains upon the smile I seldom find, there is all the sorrow and this rage. The tales I tell all leading nowhere but into the thickness of language, this seeping from all the wounds in the world. I can feel the press and lift of the atmosphere as the air sails and stumbles, I can hear the lilt and the hesitation of limb and leaf. Music plays beneath all this struggle and sway, my campaign the cracked voice and the closed throat. The song in my heart drowning in all this blood, the tears on my face trails in the dirt. My legacy only ache and confusion, my inheritance wreck and ruin.

The day is slow, the clock is plodding. My skin dissolves at the least provocation. I close my eyes and feel the press of steel. I close my eyes and I am in the sealed garage with the engine idling. I crave the abandon of bones cracking beneath this desolate fury, all this hollow prattle another balloon loosed in a room. The terror of this vivid, daily decomposition always a flicker behind my eyes. The sadness of my lack clinging cruelly to my heart. Each day feels like the day I need to end it, the promise I made to still my hand stuck like a splintered bone in my throat. The burden of this broken brain, the tension of this unbidden flesh, the tatters of my every least intention shredded before my eyes. I don't know how much longer I can hold on. My grail beyond my grasp, my life in scraps and shreds. Every day a blessing I want to end.

some brand new now

The wind threads the lapse between sky and earth, kicking its heels up in the dust. Every day another two stitches, another one cut. Each day the bright reminder of so much left undone, the ruin that declaims your way. Sketch to sketch, skin to skin. The hollows gape before us, each deed drowning in the past, every word the ghost of ten thousand others. The stretch of credulity, the seamless transition from light to light, the dense text of deep abandon. One name, then another. The words just plod and plod.

Like it or not, the evidence suggests that there are other minds at work. They seethe through the bones and the brittle synapses, they leap the gaps and mark the paths and claim some road for the virtue of the spill. They build the towers and steal the treasure and foment all sorts of gods and ghosts in the cracks and the seams. They mistake the tangle for the tenor, and happenstance becomes destiny. They mistake their loss and their limitations for a mystery beyond their noisy meat, heaven proven by the reach of trees, the tumbling world the prize to spurn for a kingdom made of wishes and jokes. The world, for its part, takes no notice.

Now the dog hunts a horsefly, its transgressions answered with gnashing teeth and swift jaws. The sun stipples the long lean of the pine. One thing, and so another, then yet another. The stories just go and go. The porch-light on in the tumbling afternoon, the cigar butt smoldering above the gathering of ash, the clock on the wall always naming some brand new now. Life as a journey, life as a burden, life as a poem discovered. Everything said just so, everything treading water and spilling breath, the poetry another symptom of seeing. Ashes on my belly, smoke threading my every breath. The dust dances with the wind, every origin story an ending alluded. All the words written, orphaned on the page.

the words won"t say

Everything goes up in smoke, everything's the weather. The clouds that gather, the sun that burns, the sky each day and night. I pace the streets and pound the pavement. I watch the traffic ebb and flow. The words will take it either way. The words know no want or way. Come rain, come shine, the foreword and the epilogue. The addendum and errata. The hopes that they bore for you dwindle into fears, the history of rage and blood and broken tomorrows. The words settle, indifferent and aloof. The promise dulls until there is nothing but the waiting for your grave.

So I watch the skies and the birds that run them. So I look to heaven and the stars that never look our way. The rain falls down, and I am resigned to it's blessing. The rain falls down, and I pretend that it's to meet me. The crows on high cackle on the wind, the world working according to their savvy plans. Wings spread as black as faith, as slick as blind ice, slipping along the lines of proof and wonder. The sky rushes down between trees and buildings, the street hissing beneath every turning wheel. I speak aloud, every word swallowed up my the storm.

The thunder comes and the rain is strung in chains off every eave, a hard march across the rattling rooftops and unsuspecting dirt. A sudden sheen, the shear of lightning, the tin roof rumble and ozone in the air. I smoke and think of probable ends, and stretch well passed the credible. The words long since left from meaning, just markers at the intersection, seats left on the plane. I spill my breath and raise my voice, oath or invocation lost beneath the rising din. It is gone at once, though I don't know what this is. A feeling left to wander these parts that the words won't say. The moment once wished for slowly leeched away into these knots and missteps. The world only roads and rain.

top of the world

The sky is bright and the day is blue and warm. Sunlight stirs the skins of things, and the bees just hang from from every bloom. The dry throat of the earth, the dominance of dust, all parleyed past thought by every sense. black wings and evergreens, pine sap and blue feathers, everything finding its level in the end. All the cigar butts and glutted ashtrays, all the unearthed stones and the broken bricks speak to my shallow disarray. My heart sings just as deep and open as any grave.

The gray days ease in between storms and thirsty stones. Lightning spills down and thunder splits the air, storms that rode the restless ocean walking across field and hill. Green fills each bough and lot, an elucidation of insects and spiders seems to flow from the bewitched soil. The clouds brace the sky, making bets and promises as they veil the face of the shining sun. We ease between want and illness, between rhythm and appetite. We slow before every obstacle, we speed down every slippery slope. The path of rout and rapine somehow fleshed out in every feeble faith. The sky wanders, the earth wanders, while we think the world wants our pleadings.

There is rain waiting in the forecast, there are shadows sticking to every skin. My story is all love and squander, it is the wide wander from the distant primal seas unto these days of empty and of ache. The words well with typical tears, the litany goes dribbling down my beard, slobber slick and aged gray. All this blood and fury hobbling in shabby circles, boots caked with mud, books heavy with dust. I speak aloud the expected spells, love and hunger, death and wealth. The bent bones of this beaten man so keen to give up every ghost.  The shuffling gait of this stumble bum bearing the brunt of my daily blasphemies. This supplication spent for the weather when heaven is only stars and storms.

vernacular

We ride the tide of this ocean without sea or shore. We feel the brush of creation flying by, the throat only opened by the song, this press of breathless prayer unbound towards eternity. The scratch of the nub, the liquid shift of captured ink, until the click of fingers, unto this conspiracy of restless thumbs. The echo bears some slight enchantment of the life which it just so recently fled, the blush of that first reach, the ruffled feathers of this natal tongue. The choicest portions, the richest sops deluged at once by ancient appetites, the story all heady glut and starveling thoughts. The flocks that leave from sagging lines into ineffable flight, their shadows drawn dark and reluctant to the sky. The least intent a thousand fitful ripples.

The sun falls with its usual disregard, shadows slink and winds pace the rails. The sunlight climbing up the trees, the damp earth sodden with dusk. The lilt of song, the screech of tires and breeched traction light and silt through the senses vast transactions. That hint of a smile you always hear in her voice, that brightness of heart that her thought on eyes conveys, the depths of digression the flood of memories over these random skins. All the broken teeth and blown kisses buried far from the desert of my wind-worn ribs, the trails of secreted roots and lively flowers. Her own bones and breath the gorgeous foundry for this life renewed. All the wounds that can be carried, I will carry some more. The only oath that exists there in every breath.

I am a space between phrases. I am the trip of the tongue, not even a breath left to lose. The strange enchantment of dull technology leaving me to unwind in these long hallways behind your mind. Some cartoon haunted house complete with shifting wall and spinning bookcase, your mind a mystery machine to these slivers retained. Adrift in these rough constellations, the condensation of each sense to a few lithe strokes, the loosing of a resting ghost sealing your lungs and lips. You are there amid the masses, you reach and beckon entangled in my drift. You are here with-in the reach of speaking. You are here, with-in these shambled breathings, the cast of my blood on every shed word. Love as letters, a flag filled with wind.

bell-mare

Don't ask who cast this shadow, don't tell me what the sun should want. The reach of limb, the sweep of the sky. The weeping wounds that closed so long ago. This flesh infested with dreams and memories, the heavens surrendered to silhouette swallows and drowsy crows. The world fled its flesh and forever haunted ours, its songs resonating in our foolish throats, its will the folding of our slippery tongues. The trees sway and the rain descends to the brutal earth. The light goes, along with everything i ever thought was mine.

There is a ringing in every inference, slow circles walked in the cold and dark. Branches scratch at the windows and the storm holds court in the dizzying depths of the midnight sky. Somewhere there are voices, caught up in the lively wind. Somewhere there are reasons lighting inhuman eyes. The heart skips and scrapes with each percussive gasp, the walls ache and sigh with the weight of the falling wind. The old ways pace the earth while we speak aloud to our hopeful myths, always howling for some intercessor. These faiths of dull extinction coiling on our nervous tongues, these prayers that stick to teeth and ceilings. Belief a world burdened by words while the night keeps its own counsel.

The world turns, spilling rain and shadow. The world turns, its clockwork of boiling stone and hushed vapor ticking away amid these dead-eyed stars. I pace the floor, I trace the path the rain removed. These words seep through, the spells and invocations of the beaten heart and the bruised bones falling beneath my feet. The wild wings and the spent breath of beasts wasted on the confusion of thing and thought. The old ways and bitter warnings treated like fairy stories while we bow and scrape to the fables that endure. Our lives a foregone conclusion, everyone knowing how it is bound to end. The lucid chemistry of living enough to fill that broken cup, the self the meat on the map of knotted proteins and native grace. The wolf awaits, its skin the restless appetite and the focused wish. When the wolf is at the door, I don't break my stride. When the wolf is at the door I don't hesitate to let it in.

these cold mornings

These cold mornings I awake forgetting that time is fleeting, then I reach for you. This glimmer of distance the dawdling of the clock on the wall, the mumble of gears turning away. The sense of the press of your hips against mine as dark dreams rouse me. The sense of your warm shadow lingering long after your flesh has left. Sleep dashed along with dreams as I am fitted back into my life. The ashes lingering forever in the fire where they formed.

I feel you like the coal so close to my palm, I taste you like the greasy reach of each sacrificial pyre. You oblige my mind like ritual, engage me like the fixed-teeth of the bike it's like riding. All these words wet sweepings of each enduring ache, all my days just the longing to say your name. This chance enchantment the whole wheel of the world, your hushed perfume still clinging to my pillow, your essence forever mingling with my breath. I know you as wish and whim, the wonder of you such an exhalation, a spell made real by speaking. I reach for you through these fiddled drizzles, shapes bent with tongue and shock to nuzzle with your every fervid moment yet to be. Memories made with the tips of tongues and fingers. History told to blood and bone.

It is this restless incandescence you rile from inside my mind that burns through my every night wide awake and so alone. The wander of your eyes from dusk to dreaming, the impact of your smile so like spending breath. I gasp and reach and grasp. My heart goes wild with want and fury. The way you warm and blush beside m touch. The way  you claim my every sense. This distance always set against us. This closeness always calling us home.

resend

The wind is always waking up, the light is always ailing. Letters that I sent myself in need of misspelling. Something about the way the ache unravels the moment, something about how the song leaves your lips insists. I scrape my hand, I scuff the dust. I reach into the dark and the distance, my touch somehow always missing you the most. The magic of this least resistance, the echoes of every familiar phrase glistening on your flesh. The world is always undone by your habit of absence. The stage another open door.

We speak in tropes and rituals, we breathe in oblivions. The moment left and the moment started, the serpent devouring its tail. The fleet words of our assembled demons, the lost spark caught and given skin. We whisper into the stagnant space beyond the sky, worms withering on the pavement trying not to think about the boot. We loose our ghosts upon every flesh not haunted by our flesh, each turn and tumble anon skinned with-in our minds and set into the ether. The words once loose too late.

These are the customary measures and scribbles, the condensations that equivocate our consciousness, the knot of the symbolic binding us to the lurking world. The sunlight casts its shapes and tendrils, the gaze of the ever hungry heart. We wave our whispered oaths before us, seeing our breath as it thickens into gray fog and glistening beads. We witness our thoughts in the mirror, mistaking that reflection for that glimmer of sentience. I drop my feet along the path in the most need of trampling, I dance this fusillade of artful ache. The scratches that scathe the skins of matter with these suggestions of intent. I want you wrapped entirely inside my touch, these spelled wishes and limping incantations. The chill of footprints meeting the will of the rising wind.

world of wonder

The idle fire of this winter sun has all but burned down, leaving a sky like sallow faith lingering on the skin. Plumes of dust and unsettled embers, trees fill with shadows, abiding this slithering sense of self. The name that fails to find a tongue, the face that stills, another portion of bone and flesh dancing in feel and fact. The frantic yapping of unhinged dogs ringing every  roof and door. Houses settle in the hinted warmth of hushed windows and electric light, the smell of smoke embedded in every moment alive. The sun glides beneath the horizon, this world of wonder loosed like doves.

The coffee clings to the steel of the cup, its bitter secrets swallowed like that old time religion, its heat a rumor best left to the digression of the senses. Dusk comes along with its typical bag of tricks, homebound birds and the glitter of distant prophecy. Stars parse the breadth of eternity, the sky flickering with the promise of every visible wish. My heart climbs up the steps of each breath and incantation, breathing in this tide of a life so far survived. Blood mingling with the atmosphere, everything connected and alone.

The hours trod on, step by step, breath and heartbeat. The slow fizz of subatomic indistinction, the turn of the wheel, the rise of the road. The umbrage of this existence sung in ache and pain, in lore and sign. The indistinction of soul and secret. The mystery so evident in all we cannot know. Sense and flesh always indistinct, any separation bequeathing only things and pieces. I speak in this slow elocution, the clumsy cadence of this peculiar incantation. The air around you aware of your every thought and glimmer, I'm there with you alone.

across all creation

My feet braid the traces of everyday trails stepping through the braces of the back door. I scuffle through the plumes of dust, every sense so vivid, slipping on the setting sun. The day failing its saddle like a bent crusader falling into shadows on white sands. The night abrupt a stone in a slipper, adrift in these drizzled stars. All the habits of these stray constellations, the wander tracked all through the halls of this wanting heart.

We are vast and we are ageless, though just the shimmer upon the least stir of dust, the last exhalation of this ever shifting world. This abrupt insistence upon the skins of things, this strange hubris that supposed sentience confides. We are as temporary as the vibrations a voice casts into the crowded atmosphere, the measure of a moment all askew. In the dark I misstep and spill an ashtray, stumbling another turn of dirt, shifting the words to the end of another sentence. Curls of smoke knowing they will forever be remembered across all creation.

Say today and it seems like shaking hands with Mr Obvious. Say tomorrow and they treat it like fantasy. They change the names and juke the numbers, cast their silly spells of words and watches. As if the constraints of punctuation can hold back the endless tide. As if they could know enough to see the shift in the substance, the lay of the waves of light. The dreams that seethe through the dwindle and the dark. The tide of life granted from some depth of the cosmos shall never succumb to something as trifling as will. As if this dance upon the burning path is any less a god because the only thing agreed on is ending.

two weeks

I don't know what I was thinking while the shadows clambered up the branches. I don't know where the moon was before I saw it in the trees. I hear the bowing of a violin, I hear a helicopter over head. For a moment there is a wash of echoes as these voices take the field. A sky once bright now again goes dark. The words all wondering whether they even want to stay.

Children play among these vacancies, the empty field, the faithless dusk. Geese above belabor their point, their voices plaintive and prolonged. Another song takes the air, a rock n roll poet of the classic type, the reach between our devastated lives and our childhood radios. It plays on like a prayer, all feeling and futility. The lift and the drag, the drift and the draw. The moon mingles with this numb enchantment, every phrase a poem, every breath sheer urgency.

Say it again before we lose the moment. Say it once more  only because I ask you to. These mingling tides of want and wander, the movements of the flocks and the folk. I linger in this ancient history that always seems to be busy happening. I cling to the faith of plodding earth and restless skies, the way I cannot wander when I look into your eyes. I cling to your every border, mingling with every inference and egress. The world and two weeks away, a sense of impending home.

the weather, once it's mentioned

All his darlings dead before him, he can't put his tattered mind to rest. All the hours watching shadows as they slip and stick. Every lamp left by the wayside. The open bathroom to light the grimy halls. The stories on the television adrift on this tide of tears. Weary from the very moment waking, tired as his dreams grind down. The crawling dust each step inspires.

The words are still, clinging to the shabby curtains. The words are slow, crawling down the wall. A color of eyes so far forgotten her gaze sweeps through every frosted wind. The bluff touch, the startled whisper. Your name a sharp percussive start, the street as empty as a story's grave. The frozen earth too cold for dreaming. The house so bright and thoroughly bereft.

So all the world has gone to winter. The old songs dry and sparkling in his heart. The frost clings in whiskered crystals. The strange cohesion of rough words and dry lips, teeth fouled with grime and smoke. The greasy eyes trodden down with weather. The glaze and glare of nothing more to say. The belly betrays, then the back, then the senses. A heart just left out to ache and parley. He speaks aloud the spell that destroys him, weighing down the blackness as the stars just fall away.

the rumor never put to rest

There's still light in the sky when the moon makes its come back, a slip thin smile spilling over the edge of the world. It waxes and wanes, all the while wandering in the space between the sky and dreaming. It falls and rises the most inside our reckless minds, the brimming light and the dead sunken stone. The bountiful goddess or the rock stuck in the sky like a named sword, waiting for some king. The neighborhood is abruptly all howl and alarm, the streets swept with sirens, the yards scattered with dogs. The twilight settles like sediment, like a sentiment settling a bet.

The ragged pines are swaddled in shadow as the earth steps over the edge, the sky clotted with birds and dreams. The night comes on with its toothless grin and its crooked gait, stirring the deepening breaths and the nameless hollows. The hunger a thing of life and limb as it moves through the dazzling gaps between action and intent. An electric leavening sparking through reach and grasp, an empty that must be heard above the din and rush of this untoward blood and appetite. The world remade from sticks and stones, the words the only ache acknowledged. This vision of existence the pull of the heedless swarm.

I sit outside and write these letters. My finger feel out the form as the darkness stalks the world. All this burning so much smoke billowing in the breeze, this spark another flicker in the night. The lovely and the brutal so vivid upon every skin, eyes always open wherever they may long to look. I speak aloud beneath the sounds of animals and traffic, a coyote always scrambling from scrap to sop. I speak aloud though it is only the collateral of each labored breath. What of my heart, what of Heaven? The clock on the wall and the calendar scribbled over with regrets. The words I leave awaiting you to grant them meaning. My legacy the rumor never put to rest.