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.