take

There in the grays of the season settling, there in the blues imbued dusk, the shape goes soft. Vision scratched and hindered, the roosting birds come home. All this splintered purpose spent over the long dull stretch of days, the years fraying the fabric until the wind blows clean through life. One thread, one blossom, one grain of sand. Every bit absolutely necessary, but the world is the story of getting by without. I’ve had about all the time I can stand.

spent portents

All these pages peppered
black with words,
trite poems and
weathered love letters,
strung instruments and
rosined draw,
only to say the dead
stay dead, and
all this lonesome
lives alone.

the hours until

The chainsaw blathers long past
sundown, the conspiracy to fell
all things lovely and true
drags on, slabs of laden gray
and drowned blues laid like
the law inside empty yard and
the dark keening street.
How do the days know,
they heap it on—
hue by hue,
blow by blow

the broken earth wailing
true names in long
chains, matter passing
states, beloved flesh
now cold clay decomposing
despite all we call and
crave, a return to
the warmth we never
hold dear enough,
passing the hours until
the past is the only
place left waiting.

American Songbook (My One and Only)

There’s no winning this one
whether they sing until
they’re out of lyrics, or
they stick to the melody,
somebody’s going to get hurt.

They were there when
the kiss turned real, when
the heart blooms past its
beating wings and
all at once the music
swells, you sing along.

Listen, the words don’t mean
it until they touch you.
The music isn’t there
until you are, the stylus
singing out the spin.

heap

Uncanny how the hands
always fold, as if at long last
conceding the point, yet
stay in play on the sly
side of this daily aggregation,
these sins that come tumbling,
crumbs on the lips,
salt for the soil. A vast
glut of plastic gutting
Ahab’s nemesis, our evil
the heap of debris and
the burned down world.
So I gather my attrition
wind the clock with
dull routine and tiny hopes,
closing the loop,
sealing circles, sitting
footloose, arms open wide.
The long talk and the big dreams
all come down to broken
cups and buried cans,
the depths of the earth
only stacked up
rocks and ruins.

devotee

The record observes and
the memory compels,
witness to your troth,
the rigors of the ritual,
the rapture of your grace.
Some slow, strong kiss,
the evident reckoning
between the daylight
and your ghost. Still,

your words stray into
this dull bludgeoning night,
like the way your hips sway
as you ascend the stairs,
your spine stretched like
prayer, posed in the form and
phrasing, will and words
bound tight in my mind
as I read you again, aloud

the right now of it
all tongue and lips and
anxious teeth as again
the condensed breath and
low animal sounds
seal this moment like
fingertips pressed against
the unspoken, the summer
floor spread with shed
hesitance, waiting in
the words.

hubris

The words will accumulate without any encouragement. The words will flex and coil, out there in the common tongue. They strain and gall and gather, each one a secret seed. A piece of something too big to fit in any one skull. Even the least syllable more than a mouthful. Even the shortest sentence served hard, parsed out like bricks for wolf worn pigs. Even these claims and cautions are hijacked by the ten thousand rivals and the rigorous grift for meaning. The long haul left back somewhere on time’s old roads. Tomorrow changing flags as it’s read.

I’m not that kind of man, whatever kind you name me. It’s not that sort of story, whatever the story told. Dying in these daily revelations. Stuck staggering around my cage. Circling this sickness, folding the forms. I’d lay it out as plain as day, but the days are all too plain. I’d save it for posterity, but I’m not that kind of writer. The day come due for deft elaboration, and I turn out all thumbs.

These are the letters never written, the books in the blood remetabolized as dreams and ghosts. That train in the station waiting in a huff, the busy dither of jobs and bodies, cups and headphones. The glazed trail of daydream eyes, of strangers and stops.  A touch of color, a flash of sky. The words all playing freeze tag, wild in the idle of the mind. This the unmarked stone, awaiting the rise of the revenant.

constellate

The call to count
those lucky stars, the shoeless
witness of them without
any feet, fall more frequent
than any adhan,
the adaptive optimism
any species wields against
the other, Hamlet heeled
nobility of the bullet
stirred brain, or such kindred
strains of plodding thought.
The bird in the hand of being school,
the wager of something
instead of nothing there
with its mouthful of
sticky sweet platitudes,
leaving unfettered blessings
there for the devils
you deal, the story you keep
stirring up, the holy
you ghost so hard. Calling
all your sly confederates to
save your stowaway soul,
leaving this ritual,
a man standing in the rain
reaching for the moon.

echo location

This simple ringing out,
the tip taps and the paradiddle
sounding off the tin roof
while the rain keeps on
keeping on-ing, this
full rounded mouthful
this brushed out static
spilling in braids and
chains down
the night’s scandalous
skin, this sound
fluffed atmosphere
a life alone sounded out,
reaching for you through
the ripples in the rain.

the midnight side

The smoke really does a number and the fire just won’t die. The pained heart and the harrowed breath, the labor quick to betray the failings of the frame. The wheel so dire and so drear. The curve learned from clockworks, the verdict rendered by the drape. Time doesn’t always take. Mortality’s a workaround.

The hours crawl and the malady seethes, the hobble built into hop along, the name hitched to the old heave ho. The weight of the unfazed sky hauling off and hitting me like a ton of, the bare knees of love all bump and bruise. All our done dailies passed on to the unseen crown. These dark deeds the bread we break. The night reels, and the dance claims us all.

The flash fire and the slow burn, the words run wild and the world bites down. I am the ache in the mirror. I am the bat by the door. The flushed compulsion and the allotted consequence. I slow the story to a crawl. The bitter tongue and the harvest bloom, this taste of flowers chilled on the midnight side. It is early, but I know you’re sleeping. I say your name and I am speaking in dreams.

sobriquet

It’s no secret, your name is
no longer spoken aloud
to mingle with the busy words
that fill the mouth and
crowd the day, the moment
a candle in the inky night,
a flame in the dervish wind.
A held gaze, a muttered euphemism.
The invocation unsaid.

It’s no surprise I never
make the list, I don’t arrive
invitation in hand. I go
where the spirits speak,
follow the unencumbered
compass of come what may.
The path is there to follow,
the way is there to go.
The words don’t carry,

the words don’t work.
Fumble with your locks and
seal your circles. Wear
your blessings around
your neck. The prayers
come unbidden, spilling
like secrets. The words
come unwanted, waking
blind in the unsettled night.

the sound out loud

Strange that the train
should sound as the moment
opens inside you, the wide eyed
secrets you feed furtive,
your breathing reaching
its fingers for your
wanton hand. Strange
the spell upon your lips,
so like the taste of a kiss,
its shape a name
gazing into you,
the train the song at once
awake within your flesh.
Nothing is forgotten,
the past only lasts so long.
Written in the gray condensed
against the window, the wailing
note that fits the list.

unknown smoke

I write moonlight when
there’s no moonlight in sight,
speak of the plodding stars
when all above is smoke.
Things aren’t looking too
good for me with the facts.
I claim truth when all I got
is useless, I claim form
when all I do is swing
the idiom. These symbols
before you the sound
your voice makes
in silence. This magic
sounding out the moment,
the meaning there
waiting to be tasted
the way lips imply a kiss,
the story the fire obliges.

purchase

There’s always a place
at the table they tell you,
once the word is out.
Remembered by friends like
high school locker combinations or
the lineage of love lessons.
Every first kiss at once
lining up the last, half
the categorical
tomorrow’s long unknowing,
the words running on
empty for years after
the meaning went dark.
This place left, sitting
on an unmade bed,
staring down the barrel,
smoke forever curling
without purchase,
trying to find the sky.

whim

It ends abruptly, a walk off
before the sentence is said.
That word that ought to
trip from tongue tip,
the taste of teeth before
the grin, the weight of want
the fist in your hair.
The wish you put in
your place, your face raised
as if in prayer, your grace
abrupt and aloud
saying please.

cold read

The room seems even
smaller in the wake of
the wailing train, that long
sad drawl and the rumble
that leaves me thinking
relativity experiments and
Folsom Prison Blues,
here in the age of ashtrays.
Here at the equation’s end.
All your star signs and night
passages, your tea leaves
full of expected dread
wash up on this shore,
this locked room
empty even of the mystery.
This sentence served.

sore to form

The world doesn’t care much
but as long as you’re there to
take it out on, it might just as well
oblige, the choked out sky,
the day’s surrender to the gray
written on the rooftops,
scuttling along the branches,
tearing down the street.
The way the warm leaves
the flesh exposed, held
tight in the gaze of
the cold hungry night.

This isn’t the kiss
so much as the taste
this rapturous spark left
in your mouth put
there by the kiss,
the lit witness to wonder
licked from your lips.
The mystery won’t have it
any other way. All
the words get pushed
around, the magic
this awestruck grasp.

Listen, it isn’t the moon or
the sirens, it isn’t the image
I left you on. It isn’t the clamor
left of every direction,
the stereos and dogs and startling
laughter too near too sudden
ringing through the night,
rising from some dark tumult,
some dread reckoning
your occult tongue
livid with blistering invective
glib with colloquial invocation.
These simple words laid
upon your blistering bones,
those deep waters
where the ache awakes.

love letter (requiem)

There is the sky
between the burned down
brown and the beach view blue,
the endless waking waves
flecked with the wax on moon,
that brace of pinpoint constellations,
all the wished on stars stretched thin.

I reach for the pen, I reach for the phone—
the words get all worked up until
they take aim at the blank page
you leave. Time is only taking
dear pets and insoluble parents,
sweethearts and ever afters. Mixed
signals and accrued certainties
and no one left reading.

The world slips by
blue banners and fiery brands,
the story that you suppose
slowly buried in your heart’s backyard
among the kittens and canaries,
the resolutions your bones have made
surviving long past us
brittle little loves,
hearts marked in margins,
I love you always
the end.

disincentive

The day another draught of smoke. Another drag and draw of ribs and wretched breath. The song strewn among the syllables while the vile blaspheme the truth. The litany of the mystery, the purchase of the ritual. The spirit spun silly by the reel, I burn down slow, adrift amid the dregs.

From anima to animal, we recuse our thoughts to math and magic. This false dichotomy, this pumped up rictus of bumps and grumbles, all our huddled explanations spread out on the floor. The words are only passing through, the turn from worm to worm. The built in “yes, and” of survival becomes the sunny crowns of the monkey kings of make believe. Too busy with the hoot and thump to attend to their humble covenant.

The missing is insistent, the lonesome a pervasive fact. Somehow the world eludes me, something in between the feels. Pronounced a ghost by all that haunt me, unable to explain or abide. As if the echo started it. As if the ripples explain the sinking stone. Nothing left to pretend, and the days grow dark and cruel.

smudge

 The stone in the shoe is a fork in the road. The flipped coin and the idle gamble. The call is the cause, the shed stone the next wave, the dominos there to fall. The world won’t give it a rest. Suspicions are that the fix is in.

So you do what you can to gaffe the deck. Attach what gods and ghosts you can to the project, sign your name on the line. Praise the lord and pass the ammo. Make a mantra out of here’s looking at yous and atta boys, hitch a ride on the way it’s gonna until you clear the field. Don’t kid yourself, kid— it’s still a long walk in the dark alone. You may as well pocket the tithe, you’re going to need every last cent.

So say your prayers and rest your cases. Burn the sage and make your peace. Live by wits and wisdom, in turn both trick and treat. Watch your step and count your stars. The fix is in how you learn to fit. Once all the faiths have made their declarations, and all the words runout. The world still turns,  out along the sprawl of the reeling Milky Way. Each step becomes another. The end will come around again.

the welcome

The empty spreads from room to room, it lingers whether I stay, like the shadows rushing in after the light’s switched off. It billows from my belly, anchored to ache and bone. This contraction amid all this primordial expansion, the self read in the rust on the couplings and the cup’s lingering residues. A reflection in the appliances, a trail of blazing  revelations. Alone in a series of small rooms. Obligatory occurrence and the unremitting signal. The church of unperturbed dust. A faith of constant fall.

More and more I am amiss in the coordinates, going from fuse to fuse, like reading a book by matches. A flash, a caption, the slither of heat singeing your fingertips. The story that we knit while we reside between our wits, how quick we read the field. I only see the flash and the fire. The. The darkness as the image persists. The uneasy feeling I should say something in some replayed conversation. Some road apart, before I knew for sure.

I know I wear my welcomes hard, I know I’ll do my best to drop the ball. The rest is a mystery with only proclamation and recanting assured. It’s a bruise and blur. I follow the rails, blind to boot and sky. The end is always a little further ahead, tripping over abandoned crosses, stepping on forgotten gods. The forest grows darke, and the path descends.

all the memories

There’s no point to any of this— the word after fucking word, the day after fucking day. I don’t have reasons, I have antecedents. I don’t have plans, I have habits. I’ve been on the bench so long, I might as well be dropped from the roster. That I waste the space to elaborate my disgrace, this empty ever after. That I haven’t fled the map altogether my continued shame. The melted wax of happenstance consumes the altar altogether.

Only the relentlessness of the light that’s always on. The drone of the fan and the face in the dirty mirror. The tentative joints and stiffened ligaments, the testimony of ancient blows, and the failings of the frame. Getting back up breaks even, at best. Thorny composers ringing the same old rosies. Each day a little more blood per bloom.

This should be the end of it. The dreadful dredge at long last done, the record set. All these days that never should have happened all the memories left. But nothing is as it should be as we all are what we are. Garbage day is every day there is.

urgent emergent

The drag of every day, a kind of grinding on and on. This witness as dismissive as it is wearying, the duty of this late last shift. On through the vague tenure of decay, the short sharp breath, the testimony of the lost step. On through this soft oblivion, the wild gyrations of the old faith growing slow. This last kiss falling away in leaps and days.

I follow the call of the urges, then the least resistant sort of way. Some vagabond faith based on oaths and observed stations. Some old standard and stubborn juke box truth. I stagger on step by step, the turn of word, the telling of the time. Even the empty is something said.

The loss of company and the slow burn of held wishes. The ache of the flesh measured in lack and want. The long fade looking you in the eye as the seasons say their goodbyes. The night drawn tight around the carcass, your touch still lingering long past gone. Close whispers and held breaths, a passion read like poems. This only if only, the light unspoken, the home unknown.

fallen alms

The words stir the skin, the bitter bite, the honeyed lips. Love letters and tender litany, the stormy romance rolls on by. Some fresh press of acrimony, some lustful tussle with your dreams. No next act, no further purchase. Hard stops and clipped diction. The substitutions that will soon replace me. Oblivion only an edit away.

My name has worn out, it grows stranger by the day. One day the words turn a corner. One day there’s a breath you can’t catch. The little nest of wishes that I carry empty, bare but for the thorns. A spray of stenciled stars, and a mind like a dying climate. Huddled in these bones and consequences, the grade climbs on and on. The prayer unfurls in smoke and ash.

I tire of the haberdasher and the architect. The smoke and the signal, the unburdening of the bones. The moon in my memory, the words on your lips. This place that resonates. This wished for world.

this ache

The light is always leaving, but it’s me that does the losing. The golden west of sunsets and recused loves, filling the frame with shade and silhouettes. Ruthless tomorrows and the drag along past, this moment of lore and smoke, a heart drawn around a name. The circle set and blessed, the unknown fear now the known pain. Every day a new incline, each day a climb. This ache of breath and bone. The weight of the name the one thing only you know.

Moth lit porch and the mouthful moon. The shattered firmament a dull dozing gray shimmering with the light that gets loose. The way the frame fits when you aim your intent. The way the night goes, a few useless moments at a time. Life the press of breath against my backbone, the hitch in my shoulder a mark through my purpose. The backlit empty, the depth of my obstruction. This bright sediment, the instrument untuned, a useless choreography.

I sit out here because the indoors are broken. The rooms are hard in their grubby geometries. The unsaid phrases and the letters left unsent. Slowly smoke curls towards the tin roof. The soft biopic of pop music shuffling through the fading frame. Hands lost deep in the reaching, an ache forever unresolved. A kiss went missing, and the whole world followed. A few pictures bereft of anecdote.

holiday

Headlights flash past, dragging shadows, pushing light. Dead leaf crunch and ritual invocations, a drift of spirits laughing in the dark. The night looms and the story changes to the tune of clock and street. The night ends, a slow burn of urgent sugar and the smoke of your lips. The holiday as good as over.  The night comes on and on.

I am loose in my observations. I am conversant in the stations of the chains. The words I spill in ritual, the vacancy I acclaim. The hallowed stretch of this numbed tongue. The empty acts of heavy handed grace. Another past unmasked, the hard stop of letting go. Want and words, trick or treat. Watching as the magic passes me by.

Dark doors and candy wrappers. Car alarms and the rumble of some scrapers rattling bass. Ghosts having to wait their turn. This is the last minute, each minute up until. Everybody’s got to go.

letters

I would say hello, but I never see you . I would write you, but I don’t know who you are. Just a direction my heart is pointing. Just a story to fill in the blanks as the night drags on. It’s always something with me. Missing someone special, missing no one in particular, just the empty ever after. The particular fittings of the form. A few short words to solve the mystery. A few swift confessions to bury the bone. The measure and the matter. The distance that insists.

I am the empty in the gesture. I am the left over ghost. The wind that fills some tattered intention. The animate bags creeping along the curb. The flag unfolds in the gust not the symbols. A habit of rituals bound to the creature. The bug nee feature of the self.

I love you though I do not know you. I love you as I profane the name. The story that isn’t a story, a life that’s all characters, no plot. They sell you art, and they sell you romance. They never tell you how to sell yourself. Fixed to bricks and fictions. Set like clockwork to flaw and flow, you gather the letters left. I love you here and now, whatever the words may mean.

water weight

Used to be they’d bind in the gravitas. Not so much the heft of the words but the weight of the paper. Not so much the weft of the phrasing but the cleave of the spine. Shelves heavy with say so, stacks and stacks of all this negative left unsaid. The words can wait out lifetimes, clinging on with only words for purchase. Now they go from ghost to ghost, legions of apparitions awaiting capture. Now they nest amongst the driven dreaming, turning over in the apostle mirror. These gleaming unseen grimoire. The engines of becoming released at last.

We are among the latest failings, we measure among our last. Here on the stark shore of devastation with a wave of fascism about to break. Writhing in our ardent husks, piling word atop word as we stare at the edge of the cull. Lapsed into our monkeyshines, thinking someone would come along. Seething our worrisome souls away as we seal ourselves within our monument. A heaven built of tombs.

The bathroom mirror isn’t keeping any secrets. Time is always passing by, the face you live with the mark you bear. Turn out the light, there’s nothing left to see. Shut your mouth, there’s nothing left to say. The words don’t need me to carry their water. The words don’t need to bear my weight. The tightness in the heart, the tug of longed for breath. The love that will not bear your  witness. The love that will take the words and go.

the wheel

We come upon another notch, and the circle starts over, a dash of day and the elongated dark. Only the broad strokes go for broke. Only bone and brisket, we pile on the swag. Dragons perched on piles of tomorrows. The enmity in our identity, the treasure maps, and magic spells. We light ourselves on fire and blame the world for burning. These numbskull cries for mercy for those who only view us as fuel. Death worshipers pushing you into the queue, skittering on the bones of meaning. The coming tide that we will break. This ever plodding campaign.

The words wind up and walk us on a sacrifice. The words get turning and dash us all about. The earth is grim and giving, and sets a dire covenant, but the words are a hungry swarm, all ritual and appetite. They walk the waves of annihilation through fields of brick and beef. These old blood tithes of our better angels. The offerings we bear and take. The wheel insistent in its intentions.

The day relents and the night becomes, we fix upon distant consistencies and the gods of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. I feel the moon move through me, a brief respite in the grinding of mortal gears. A stretch of breath, and the next ache to settle. The far hearts and old hungers. The burdens of the years accumulate. I turn until the wheel wears out.

the downgrade

The night builds up at the window, spilling through the screen, seeping down the walls. Curled up with our broken bones and moon sop hearts, we wait for the transient shine. Another miracle to witness, another love that done you wrong. These rooms thick with wishes, these wash away stars. You are a word awaiting speaking. You are a spoke in the wheel. You turn in turn.

The clock climbs the walls, the ashes get everywhere. The flesh avails all the works of words. The talking of the tower, the seer of the ten thousand ways. The litter of choice, the calliope bright baubles hung instead of stars. Thrones and crowns and family trees. The lies of lineage, the monkey do virtues common to the critter. The law of want and whim, high on the same old limb. The moon waits up for you.

How I long for bedtime stories, for the rituals of happenstance. The rules written on the wall, the shoes all lined up by the door. The windows open to the woods at night. The places that you make together, the worlds you leave behind. This world slipping away with the moon missing the window. This life among strangers. The long march into night.

archival

It’s a strange season for changing states in. The edge of the weather, walking towards the tide. Some distant drifting day flashing passed, in a rolling storm just passing youth. The summary you come to with the numbers coming in. October slowing by day and degree, the cold a taste and a testament to changes raging on. The slow dark lonesome, a life of long plodding night. The words come to their own conclusions.

I’m always waiting on the rain. I’m waiting for my day in the old forest, that dream of epicenters. The voice that told me to return to the earth. The story told til the bones go dirt. The angle of the light, the depth of the spell. The words until they’re all that’s left. The fever long gone out.

I realize I am already among the artifacts, the failing limbs, and nameless deaths. The days go on for days. They ache for change in their constituency, the turning of the plot. Some scribbled over tired remainder, some bygone tethered to the alphabet. No matter where the words leave you, they’ll find a way to carry on. The chapters by their names and the never ending test.

state of the art

The sky is turning gray, and the moon can’t wait to burst through the blue. Albedo bright and heavy as a bucket of bricks, the swell impels the bowing tides. The whole of the ocean, pressed between the folds of bunched space, livid with the spell. We stagger and step, we bend and we sway. We dance our reels, we sing our part. This is the dream of waking. The first forest and the fork in the road. Our souls only how we set the  stars.

This is the light that beckons from your bedroom. This is the goddess rubbing the ash from your eyes. The long song, the urge past purpose. The moon so full of stolen shine. Not the power but where you put it. The sleeper within awakens. You open the window as if in asking. Not the prayer but the path, asking for your answer. The language of velocities.

Loose your tongue because you’re magic. Count your breaths because a watched clock is always in the works. Delve alone in your glory and your anguish. The tattered letters and worn through words. The halls that fill with shadow as you get the inkling that you’re not alone. This world submerged in storms of hush,  all at once the wonder of the looming moon.

tethered

It’s a Merlin thing, the way we know ourselves. Chasing lost wisdom. Gathering low hanging fruit, speaking with authority of the fecundity of unreached limbs. A huddle of angels jabbering away at a burning brand, the clamor of competing hosts, the night’s greatest hits on shuffle. The turning words and the savaged flesh. The whole, then the numberless pieces.

This rush of cognition, the hot end of time. The foundations fall away, tomorrows dwindle. All third wheels and fifth business. The time stretches between scenes, until there’s barely a line to remember. From daybreak to dissolution, soup to nuts. Then the hard blackout. The tremblings about unlikely curtain calls.

Tell me the words that are worth remembering. Show me the shapes in the stars. The room is small, the night is heavy. The stories all wind by the window, tales that rise and fall as tides. These bones held here in hope and pain. This claimant to crown and thorn, this hard held hill. These waling ghosts clamoring to be named. The never I am tethered to.

the exalted

It is the art of it we never miss, left to fill in the margins and explain bewildering contradictions. Irresistibly drawn to marking up the walls. Seeded words stacked around the elder root, the perplexing direction towards every way at once. Our mortal eyes seeing the maw of our inevitable ending bearing down, the gods they’ll only use against you. Slipping old spells, recalling mortal forms. The layers we long to leave. The bounds we were born to break.

We mark the paths and imagine their makers, see the lessons left in the signs. Dot by dot we shape the seams, raised on heaven and more constant stars. Wonderstruck and spellbound we work around our words with our fervent urges. Strange dreams of kings and prophecy. Waiting to take to the tackle, teeth waiting to work the bit. We step into the circle, we do our turn. The constellations and the cloister.

You will live on in song and story. You will live on in skin and kin. The first forest and the elder trees aimed towards the radiance. Our bodies the flourishes of the seething earth. We sing amid the chorus of the striving and changing of life. The multitudes flummoxed and in a fury of faith and hunger. The voice spoken into the rapt expanding silence. A flurry of gods and hauntings. The exalted never shy about the crowns they craft.

intangible

This is how I say goodnight. This is how I say good morning. Quiet symbols waiting for a screen. A few scant letters bolting through the atmosphere. A thin web of electromagnetics our omnipresent tongue. Waves of slick ciphers sieved through nimble machines. The ghosts of ghosts our heralds and our voices. This slip before the great separation. This votive scant offering to the coming numb.

The moment marked, the strain between my shoulder blades, black coffee bitter on my breath, the droning fan and the earnest television. The moment replicated, these sinewy incantations that thrive in our urgent hearts, the addition to the entity. These tellings that uncoil inside us. The inevitable surrender to the narrative.

The sizzle that they sell us with. The mystery they mirror and smoke, the message they approve. I’m another set of proclamations, the thick of the signal, the turn of the reel. I loose another few bars of incantations, all my birds set on the line. The words turn the clockworks. This magic bent on spec.

the very thought

The skies above have nothing on the stars I see. The crashing seas nothing on my coughing fit cacophony. The short report and the shredded breath. These wishes a ragged hesitation, between themes of distance and existence. Between the lean ahead, and the fall below. The very thought of you, a catch in my throat.

Life is a lot of hurry up and wait. The only thing certain are the curses. The busted chops and body shots. The case resting upon brutal truths. The absence serving to emphasize the desire. The ache of want, you a world away.

Words there to pad out the punctuation. Punctuation there to weigh down the words. All I have are the days I’m trailing. All I have is the rooms I wreck. These letters I have never sent. These letters I have yet to write. You the flame and the candle. This ache all the love I owe.

backmask

When did we ever, haven’t we always go the bones of the elocution, from the blocking to the soliloquy. From café to carousel, from menu to maggot, the language may not call the shots but it sure plans the trip. Whether the pounding of your heart or the heavy in your breath, the words know what they’re doing. They take you aside and set you to churning. They seethe and riot in the silence of your skull. They bolt unbidden from your lips. The words aren’t worried if you get their meaning. The words are content with their residence in your flesh.

So I say it because it sounds like something people say, I say it because it looks pretty in this light. So goes the glossary, a pinch of cognition and a lot of relic etiquette. Complicit to the complexity, we tend the engines and wield the symbols, turning the wheels of reckoning and ritual. Dancing in circles, seeding storms. The secrets sitting inside their pillow forts while the magic happens in plain sight.

I venture the guess, make the leap. I cross the chasm, keep the farther coming. These high harmonies and ascendant caresses. These hand holds and graspings of the flesh. Gone from ink in the margins to robots blemish in the text. The words flutter free from tooth and tongue, peace spoken and sooth said. The mirror over full of such lush and abundant light. I write the letters I would send you directly upon your proofs. Nothing between us that the words won’t  wash away.

pretender to the fall

The leaves are dead, yet they still crowd the branches, the crown pretending towards the sky. This worn through blue, this gray lace glamour of the gloaming’s gentle crush. We spill over the horizon, and the sun keeps shining on. The world is a weight of mass and mind, a worry and a wasteland, the threat of gathering facts. The world fills up with shadows, relinquishing the day. I miss you, and pretend that it’s okay.

The world happens fast, whole months and seasons speed past while I smoke and cough and watch the clock. Heir to the long night, kin to the lonesome wind, the fool of the thousand passages staring at the ceiling. The dull nights of lights and screens. The long days regretting the sun.

It’s to my last that I will love you. All the words once the words wear away. Summed up and sentenced to these further indignities. Some letter cracked and creased. Some photo on your phone. No more days entangled in limb and clockwork. No more promises to turn to dust. The hollow upon awakening, and all the words that follow.

facing further

I never know when to stop, but I don’t know when to go. I don’t know the activities for any of the whens. The clock is a list that goes unread, every second a slew of words more. Farther in the telling, closer to the told. The tribute and the trials, the clutter of the altar licked clean, the soul salted with sacraments. I call you to mind, fitful with the ritual. I cling to the dream, your rapt admission into evidence. The proof of the ablution, the cadence of the praying. Your urgency these fervent repetitions. All your stretch and reach.

Another day spent in boxes. Another night clattering around in rooms. LED halos and the mantra of the bathroom fan. The hunchings of the organism, the bleeding on the clock. Stiff muscles and sore organs, sticks and stones battering the bones, immortality running down. Bathing in my ashes, drowning in ember and spark. I speak aloud to know my lonesome. I say your name to make my will known. No rattle save the ceiling fan. No rapture of called kiss or covetous light. Just a man making wishes without a star in sight.

Tomorrow is another day when every day’s the same, the scripture and the dogma, the frames we take to make do. I stir the fires, I tend the bent, I turn the phrases so the sear evens out. The vigils I sit, the peace I keep, while years fly by and the covenant creeps. The work of this weaving between us, the surest magic the endurance of the held line. The saying, the making it so, the adherents and the whims. The turn around a little longer, until we are facing further, tomorrow the law of hill and stone. The night slow and heavy, I always want you more.

aggregate

Enough years go by and you know whether the world wants you. Enough years get past you, the world won’t know you at all. The decrees of the lock step horrors, the proclamations of these deficient little gods, rise and fall like any tide. The boxes check that match the climate. The alignment of the constellations, the distance from the sun. The rest only spit and whistles. The rest only the racket of cicadas, the clamor of crickets. The aggregate chatter of any given species ultimately mostly noise.

I am all shiftlessness and dereliction. The idle hands of hyperbole and rhetoric. The scorch marks and blast patterns of recklessness, the drag marks and debris of routine. The bare bulb and the green headphones, blessings and blank spaces where my enthusiasms used to be. The feints and digressions identity requires, the poor functionality of meat and spook excreting some attempt at a self. The rigor of the animal, the customary alibi. Crowns and gowns and sacks of skin. A room to keep these feelings in.

We are held tight by the moment, we squirm and squeal at the added injuries and insults, spew our excuses as again and again the hammer comes down. Tell the hurricane about your station. Tell the tiger of your destiny.  I am a knot tied between blood and breathing, a crowded roundabout of roads and trails and intermittent doors. The sentences we serve at the altar of abstraction paid out of our hides. The earth is the crunch of numbers; the sound of accounts settled.

deliver

There’s a lot to be said for context. I’m never needed, so I’m never there. The run on sentence that trailed off. The trial period that just hangs around in case you change your mind. The lonesome that will outlive everything you know.

It’s a lot to expect. I’m always coming in in the middle of these things. This porridge too hot, this porridge too cold, where do they find the time? This is the stuff they can’t make up, so they take it while they can get it. And most of it was over before you even heard their names.

I know I ask a lot. I can tell from all the question marks I leave lying around. Socrates said know thyself, and he was letting you off easy. The forms are there for the filling. The seasons are known by their sales. The lines fall flat, I don’t deliver. I wasn’t where you had to be.

the shoe

Fifty years and I’ve learned nothing. Don’t ask me how the world works. Don’t tell me if the shoe fits. Each day an erasure. Each night a dearth of dreams. The calendar and the contacts. These letters wearing thin.

Maybe I picked up a trick or two. I learned to be my own ghost, even the chains. A few sparse lines, spent fantasies and gripped grievances. A mirror for shaving and seeing what’s gone. The rudiments of love and distraction.

The words entered for the record. These sentences meant to be served, not read. My lips dry, my stories dead. A few more symbols hung off the abstraction. The actions go on, anguished over, but undelivered.

over already

This is where the day would have us. The dusty lampshade and the complaints of political ads. The sported hopes, and the ubiquitous skin. Sore joints and the sins of our fathers. The playbook where you have to pass. These selves left unrevealed. These habitual revels, and compelling celebrants.

Here’s the hour of your acknowledged absence. Here’s the time of remaindered lusts and edited memory. A flush, a flash, the thrill of life renewed. These vivid wishes and bitter seasons. The gap between the days we share and my weeks in solitary. A smudge of messages sticking to a screen. The takeaway texts.

Spun of the resin of dust and plasma, the flesh a map of stressors and habitats, you lean into the wind. You speak softly, your tongue slick with symbols, the bitter dose, the daily alms. I imagine you always embedded in my longings. Stiff to the limb, sore to the oratory. You the wish, you the glimmer. The taste of saying your name aloud.

hours after

Long ago I let my mind wander, and it hasn’t been heard from since. All that’s left are reels and furies, lucid lusts and ubiquitous sorrows. The forms to fit the rattling in. The pitch inward, the dead sea of dreams, those furtive words upon the edge of sleep. The language let loose in this animal skull. Turns of phrase and taken fancies, the rhythm and the breath. Backlit by ancestral fires the shadows pitch and loom. The place where the words let go, and the senses give way.

And so these minutes against the deadline I set inside my head, thoughts all but gone, and the words on their way. The blood bunches up and cuts loose, the bellows takes the air. I sieve and seethe, flutter and furl, missing the me of things. Lonesome toasts and abandoned appetites. The virtuosity of the labile engine. The mystery unbothered, I drone on and on.

There are stories that no longer fit. There are stories that I never wore. There are tales told, and details abandoned, and books no one else has read. I hold so still that for long stretches I cease to exist. I hold so still that doors offer up their opening, and all the locks forget to work. I write against the clock, the countdown my only context. I write these placid epitaphs and love letters that read like death threats, always up hours after I drift off.

hard to heart

I’ve barely skimmed the surface. I hardly made a dent. The crossroads of all my philosophies, the fruit of my labors. Nothing in the larder, pockets always roomy. Measured at a spider’s pace, the curtains closed up tight. A life of picking poses for my corpse.

Not stars, not rain, not the sliced apple moon. Walls worn down by silence and shadows. Walls that hold their breath. A house, room by room.

We’re the ones that get found by the neighbor. We’re the ones that get eaten by the cat. These long haunts of the socially awkward and abhorrent. The dull epilogues of the walk-ons and write-offs, the unlovables and the hard to heart. Gone, and going on and on.

the crown on down

It came to me as the glittering wings of numberless swarms trailed their sparks across the dusk. Awake to wave after wave of inferred multitudes, the thought only one set of wings alight upon a slip of wind. The shape I take and the wings I steal, the way the hand plays out. The world we see invisible, our work the mystery. A glass of water, measured in the swallows and all the empty left.

Here the black of a cup of coffee, there the black of the numbers on the struck dumb clock. The stitch in your spine, the skip of the spell. I resign myself to the curb and the stoop. I’ll stick to the stars and gods. The ritual and the taste.

We are gifted, we are given. The strain in the conversation, the message on the phone. The razor of reason, the razor of the reel. A dance upon us, a fire in spreading. The idea of fireflies, the streaks of falling stars. Number us among the smug sputterings of those safely beneath the lid. The crown on down, from the con to the quick. This mirror of missing, this song of steam.

numbskull

The day resigns in cloud and dusk, the flesh contains no respite. The sleep you seek in wood and stone. The sound of water and the night side of the hill. The path revealed as if in dreaming. The way of ache, the way of appetite. The heart wants on and on.

I’ll be there long past the thought it overs. I’ll be there in the stir of stars. Clockwork talk and the words on the wing. Life goes by the booth in the corner. Life goes on like the show it is. The earth turns beneath the trembling. Walls waiting for the fall.

I’ll leave the winds to pounce and plummet. I’ll leave the rain to fill the sky. The light by the sofa, the coffee gone cold. Oh my love, I sing and sigh. It’s all love letters by and by.

the worn road

The story before is the story you know, to know the storied hero of lunch box and action figure on the way to glory. To be so certain of the way words play. The evidence always imminent. The twist the point of all further evangelisms. The symbol the very paramount of what they said. I am a telling of ten thousand summers. I am a prophet of the coming wilderness. The weary cadence of the sad believer. The story certain it wants said again.

The story fresh upon the lips, more luscious in each telling. The break from looming consequence a giddy surrender. These dreams I have, these dreams I want. The insistence on the collar and all the corollaries. We lay the blame on these appetites, the bare direction of want, and the insistence on innocence. The simple notion of your closeness. This sigh while I wait to sleep.

Again my heart is on the water, the starry seas of faraway. Again I want in sleepover light, the popcorn movie and your sovereign eminence. The waste and want of days lived against the common refrain. This swim upstream against the rush of command. Here at the ache of intersection, the returned gaze and I told you sos.

pornograph

A building wind gone wild and a tide of tree limbs, the moon walking tiptoe through the scattered leaves, this hour of long and lose. The heel of the season just come down, grinding at the bones. All your darling lovers littering the tenses. All the conversation left between you and the heaven help us moon. The years and the hour glowering down, and you linger for a moment in the taste of missing lips. Wanton wishing, and the shadows weighing down.

You again at the edge of fever. The imagined heat of remembered flesh, the long night of the deep lonesome. All these threadbare metaphors, this ten thousandth starry starry night. Words to press against the pleasures you possess. Common drugstore odysseys and the grave you’re digging. Breathless moments and blessings numbered and laid to rest.

I want you, but it’s way past lights out. You the very limbs of slow kindling, the deadly art of live wire. The heat the root of your incarnation, this light a glow from the tomb of the unknown star. Love letters and ritual incantations. The what to say and where to say it. My wishes all upon you, and all these words instead.

oh the wicked ways

Oh the wicked ways of syntax. Oh the devilish draw and drag of simple syllables. The strange pretexts that pick and choose us. The line of succession between the tenses. The dire pairings of intent.

I sigh deep, and I close the window. I smile sad and have a smoke. The light left on and the fan always running. My sentence runs on and on.

All the words to say I want you. This wishing you into all my dust and drear. The dingy pillows, the ashtray eyes. Just the words and the way I always go there. The way I want you and only have these words to show.

the words for all we know

Would that the words would leave. The stories untold passing on to another unteller. The burden of proof left to some other page. To live past visitation. To build a fire where the elder spirits don’t call. This empty unencumbered with the telling.

The words habituate the husk, stick to the edges of the form. They step fearless into speeding thoughts and try to wrest them from their direction. They cling tight to the feeling as the heart sings in rounds. They cling tight to the shine when they come claiming crown. They chat you up and bed you down, ghosts in the hard harbor of unnamed hungers. They tear you down and sell your soul for scrap.

The hour lingers and the words come round. They open all my drawers and call out my secrets. The stacked deck and wicked mantra in the mirror. The old taunts and broken oaths, the watcher out the window, the murder at the door. They toss my cell and scoff at the mess they make, 52 pick up with all my plans. I’ve got nothing, but they don’t stop. All the hard questions and told stories. Love letters only words for all we know.

where the flesh abides

This is way of the love of long partings. This is the place where the flesh abides. The brooding heat, the clinging ardor.Your scent in the air like the press of a kiss. A rush of blood, a sudden palpitation. This onslaught of wishes, a ring around the moon.

The street outside is fraught with its intrusions, the pitch of traffic, the ruckus of dogs. Every last salvo insists upon the room around. Present company and equity sweat. The love letter tethers of hearts and parts. The hard contrast between world and want.

The world is full of fitful attachments. The hush of the forest and the tilt of your head. The crush of blood rush appetites. Goodnight lines and the weight of your ritual bones. These shameless imaginings and the unreasonable demands of the flesh. This furtive worship, this lingering night.

under the see

At certain sounds I shut my eyes as if I was a place to hide. The nights go crazy, what with all the ambiance, rags, bones, and bottles. The whole contentious retinue and their penny ante capers. There’s never any peace inside, so I leave me in the dirt. Without me to kick around, there’s hardly a bother at all.

Deadened thoughts and lead lined senses. The claims of erasure never sufficient to stay the sentence. Every word a hole to fill, always with more words. The conundrum stumbles, the tongue trips and glides. Sort through the rubble, pick your favorite pieces. Scan the shelves and choose your weapon.

The noise a need when the need arises, the noise a mark on the map of the mind. The name gets further every day. Open your eyes and slip on this skin. Loose the words that burn. This vessel of the invisible. This curse of laden claims.

the romantics

I suppose we shall always live apart, me and my precious heart. It’s a lament I’ll lay down by the tide, a secret I shared while seeing you as I looked at the moon. Waiting and wanting and speaking aloud. A story about what my favorite story would be if these stories could come true. These various meditations on how it feels to always somehow miss the mark.

The shadows work where we’re not watching. They close the doors and dull details. Reveal depths and hidden vessels, rushing away from the citadel of the seen. The details all devils giving us away. Beware the tale you buy. Beware the blanks you are offered to fulfill.

The beat goes on until the party’s over or the power goes out. The back and forth of wish and want. The need to hear it said with no skimping on the beauty. The need to leave a mark for Cain to bear. The gray shores and endless tides littered with remainders. My life the story of only needing what was missed, the measure of the drift between these words of love and what they really mean.

home

The lights go on, the lights go off. I stop, back lit in the kitchen window, lingering in the refrigerator glow. There but for the angle of the camera. The plotted paths of the assumed observer. The aggregation of the algorithms. A conspicuous crowd of shadows.

Here in the dark I disambiguate voice by voice. The speaking out of turn to the speaking out of choice. A darkened room with the story going. A stir of words halting down the sentence. The breath given without a thought.

We perform the rituals of the visible. We hit our marks and play these parts. The ordinary willed into the world by repetition. The illusion of motion in the way we all hold still. A flickering screen, the world outside seething with need.

evergreen

It’s the sort of thing the eyes don’t see unless they’re told to. The subtle turn of the seasons pressed against the left coast lean. Brown hills stippled with scrub oak and kindling, the fires longing to see the ocean rolling down from the mountains. This long dry stretch awaiting the rains of winter, thirsty peaks bereft of snow, the Pacific busy learning new tricks. The clinging sea and the calamity line.

The rasping cough and the starry eyes. This shambles of loose portents. This prophecy of bird and bone. The witnesses testify and the words run wild. Myths and nihilistic appetites. The tyranny of the curve.

You watch the numbers adding up. You sound the call to arms. The world reduced to swamp and ashes. The faith in the falsifiable failing while they carefully weigh the liar’s part. All this talk of heaven as smoke reclaims the stars.

paramount

The challenge of the sky is keeping the story straight. We weaken the words we use as they learn to work us. All these syllables saying where to look. The same to tell you what you’re seeing. From the sky blue sky to starry night, the clarity obscures.

The challenge of the spell is getting the timing right. The wind up words, the clockwork will, the wiring built to bear the declaration. We are the easiest part of the enchantment. The meat made of dreaming aches to agree. Tick tock, soup stock, the light of the intersection. The giddy ghost always just around the corner. The magic just in time to talk you through it.

The challenge of the word is marathons by the mouthful. The only time it gets a breath is when its said. Depending on ears and fingers. Fighting endlessly against the drift of fleeting animals. Turning the world to ruin tripping off the tongue.

mailbox

Enough with the stolen moments, the tattered breath, the curtain call. Enough with the rising minor chords, the accordion’s creaks, the old drag and draw. Lest we peal out expletives and set the company to scatter. Lest the moment lived to avoid lets  loose its seething legions. The matter is always swapping spaces. The direction is always dissolution.

There’s pieces that aren’t in the inventory. There’s parts that won’t be coming back. That’s the nature of the ticket. That’s the story, as far as it goes. The entropy is systemic. Eventually every end is frayed.

This is the two step of the walking wounded. The tradecraft of our fading fortunes, the ephemeral mark of the falling star. Some old soul, turning in slowed circles. A flickering light in the early hours. The mailbox spilling over.

the drifts you get

 The clock comes on hard all at once, the inevitable chipping away drip drip dropping through the day, another hour due. The flagrant waste as the wheel kept spinning. The martinet of the moment hissying up a fit, clearing his throat and tapping on his wrist. The clock calling out for another round of usual suspects. The words stand, dull on the line up. Bored to tears as they hold their places, enough in the know to give nothing away.

The words come walking off the line up, every one of them free to go. The words go home with who they please. Both Babel and diaspora, Lot and salt. Every one of them a criminal, however they wear their capes. The collusion of the drifts you get. The wanton loss of motive.

Sitting here I’m really a bunch of wishes about kisses, and the things that go my way. The led glow and the ubiquitous sounds and aches. These fervent feelings somewhere deep down the language and made to fit the tongue. The press between the ghost and the signal, the glimmer and the gist. These words that find their purchase in my turn. This place, dissolved in your sentience. A longing long gone on.

sublimate

The dispatch barely happens, the days are strapped, the words loom in their dull husks. The dismal climb down into. The moment, the mood, the object, the being. This feint toward explanation while slipping incantations between algorithms, the blood always claiming its ways. The words that pause for a minute to meet your gaze before pressing themselves through your chest. They say, and you ring out bones to appetites. They linger, and it is so written.

The case by case accumulation, our daily breads and so we saids, the magic we have to spell out. They are letters in the margins. They are the marbling of the meat. You breathe and stretch and bow your body to its resonant surrender, the rationing of pleasure until you sing its praises. The letters it would have you write, the reckless procession of your need. The covenants you would pursue, wagering your every sin.

This is for the shape of your speech against the air. This is for the way you mouth the names. Your epitaph read aloud, the cards turned and stars fallen. A necklace of prayers to distract from affliction, a sip from the chalice to imbue this kiss, the spill of will and the fall into want. A spell whispered and the entity embraced. The ringing of the vessel, your skin covered with the night.

breath sacrament

Just once I wish it was the ocean. Just one time let it be the talk of the tide. The flecks of foam and the crashing waves. Our kisses warm, our faces wet. The sea sounding like thunder as we savored the day. It’s not a memory we share, at least not with both of us there.

In truth it is as much as story as it is an entanglement. A want cast in words and pictures. Descriptions of kisses. Lots of declared love. The things we say we say. The reckless draw of want, the ceaseless magic of wish. We make ourselves in saying things we take for truths.

Still, I say your name aloud in my shabby room. Piles of dusty books and knickknack idols witness the press of air, the sharp startle of my voice out loud. Your name, flashing before an aching gaze in sacramental breath, touching the all of you I adore. This tide of tumbled blood, this earthly invocation. These open hours, folding the ghost through rushing pronunciations, your incandescence on my breath. Even now, in this reading, your name aloud.

done undone

Again the light and its limits, again the words all but spurned. The waste of breath and ache, heart beating hard, staring at the ceiling. The day bent and broken, slumped in its chair, swimming in its suit. I stare at familiar fictions, no longer able to act out my own. The television drawls, the fan whirs. The coffee sits cooling in the cup.

The clenched shoulders of untempered angst, the grind of tooth and nose. The gears spin slow, the days flying by, the nights white knuckle rides. The sorrow overtakes the flesh. Each day it all slips away. Every night the play by play on the replay. Done, and undone.

The machine keeps plodding, a collector of enigma, a weaver of mystery. Generate the labyrinth when you run out of Minotaur to hunt. The seeder of need, the whisperer in the night, this vast somnambulance. The words eating away at the sentence. The words separating the wings from the song. The automatic operant, the vine writhing toward the sun. This drift, this drag.

the count

The clock burns low,  hours clambering down the walls. The tepid numerals, the salted shatter of the dial. The blue bright flame giving the need a name. The television stagger and the blue bias glow. The evergreen and the worn clean through.

I live the ache as evidence. I enter these pained passages into the record. The words scatter down the page. The cursor what little is left of this longing. Black moods and blood touched abstractions. I have to spell it out.

Night slips in whether you watch it or not. The absence weighing heavy as light leaves only its want. Life in considered stills. Life in gnashing doubts. All these feels and seems. Living without the means.

clout

The dumb blunt instrument staggers on, barely capable of motion and cognition. A creeping shadow and mindless doom, this hunch of nerve, this clench of breath. A burden on itself— never mind society. The legacy of causality, the  creature we become.

Hold fast to these meager treasures, hold tight as the sands slip away. Slow and fleeting, the plodding on of sea and stars. Time is nearly down for the count. Forget about the blow by blow. It will take everything left to stop the onslaught.

The fall isn’t a spoiler. It’s the only given you get. Then it’s the discipline to land what you throw, and the guts to take the hits you can’t slip. Bell rung, the lights a flicker, the adversary a stubborn blur. This is where it gets you, stumbling with the hard count sure to come. Clock cleaned of dreams and glad tomorrows, you stumble on just to make them show their work. The meat headed steady, straight for the fire.

road to go

The night has its measures. The stars have their stripes. The sky stirs, the wheel turns, the song gets another verse. The room is dark with smoke and motion. A life flickering against the blinds.

An arc of ache stretching over the horizon. The leaden  limbs, the struggling breath. The abstraction of a series of distresses. The fitful persistence of a fading light.

All the words I’ve pinned to the poster board. All the words I hung on the line. The climbing groan of clockwork. The crabbed hand in the margins. This dream dragged like chains. The burning brand in your darkest night, the web you walk into.

all these moons and stars

Play it sad and slow, let the words emerge in familiar phrasings, the light upon drawn curtains and the shadow up the stairs. Entrance each beat by the bar, open up the melody, and make the music pay. Such sweet repetition, the stitching that holds in all the names. Blessings and lessons and bittersweet longings, forever spilling from your heart. The wild grasping passions that leaves us bruised and low. The solemn ardor of love in spring. Dashed passions leavening crystal wits. All these moons and stars.

Like the story goes I got the message wrong. Like they always say it happens sometimes. It’s the turns I seem to take, whenever the mood lets loose. The same damn song drafting on the learning curve. I never make my point but I use up every last nerve. Distant darlings and stolen moments. The sudden crush of summer rain. This train is all but gone.

The close retort and the lonely sustain. The keys on the counter, the dog by the door. The light on low and the music swinging off the shadows. Someone missing someone, singing sharp and bright. So ordinary it is every story. So odd and lovely it is you and only you.

smoke

It starts, the first fire deep into the night, a spark held over from the fall. The folded smolder of this immolation. A breath of the incantation. This dose to dull and numb, to lull the very senses. Another rushed ignition. This ransomed incandescence. This poor translation from dream to being.

This is where the magic happens. This great drift unto dreaming. This urgent search, this misplaced word. Hidden in the temporary, blurred about the light. The fade into indistinction. The place where words won’t go.

I always burn the midnight oil. My candle lit at both ends. Some compulsion or mortal curse knowing just where to find me. Smudge my name from the awnings. Chase my memory from the eaves. At once again this burning. At once again some scant light.

empty set

The stars replaced with ceilings, the moon with some screen. I moved inside to to do my ailing, box up my affect and let the tears run loose. Now the sun is all but gone, and I have tagged along, fading into flesh and bone and isolation. Alone without the words, and now the night has come.

I am the waning moon, I am the empty set. Some string of words to trawl through the heart, some resonant fragment to express my lack. The words hold more, and so are less and less. Fungible and inconstant, while we mock the precision of the carcass. The flesh, bereft of our eloquence, contains our evidence. I am the path of steep declines. The mark of certain burden.

I am done beating the drum. There’s no gong for me to bang away on. No star I’ll follow, no flag I’ll fly. Still, the world will always be served. I’m one of millions all a stir from this kicked down hive. Less a choice than a direction. Less a leaf than the river run. Awake though only dreaming.

nullify

The soundtrack is there to tell you how you feel about what you’re seeing. If you don’t listen, who knows who you were. Sometimes you hum along, as if the tune isn’t you. Sometimes you let the others do all the singing. Eventually it all costs the same. Mostly you pay in little pieces. Sometimes you pay it all up front. As the moment leaves, you are mementos and souvenirs. Little gewgaws and brittle slivers. Dwindling images and memories by rote.

This is why the story lets you down. This is how the singing gets you sore. All these self help holies and layaway heavens. The rounds there for the turn, not the take home test. Eternity is full of a lot of not you. You only go as far as what you carry. No one saves your place.

I sit and listen to the sound of sprinklers, the scent of treated water caught on the wind. The room fraught with dust and scattered mammals. The porch light washing the night bleary and blind. The stir below just so much wan moonlight and cutout stars. Now just words spilling away from the turning. Now just the erasure left in the tense.

follow

The day burns down slow, awash in these low winds and atmospheric blues. A swell of wilted leaves, a shimmer in the greens, a flash of passing chrome. Overwrought about the head and heart, a pin point and a ripple, always following the arc of some story. Traffic stutters by, the music lays it on thick. The date you celebrate.

There in the heartbeats and breath by breaths, the draw onward to keep on sliding down the fire. How our eyes ache as we take in the empty, the measure of this twilight against the dream, these distances that are the measure of our days. Season late or season early. A word to butt in on everything everything under the sun. This breeze brushing the knees. The calendar reasons.

What am I but these same mismeasures? These past tenses and abridged regrets. Fragments flickering against unnamed actors. The slack and slander of flesh over time. The first suggested searches. I sit out as we all fall down. I sink with the spin, the naming and the nothing. I follow the rising night.

moths

It’s the cup of coffee to carry you over. It’s the cup of coffee to the other side of the night. The remorseful dose to hold you to the harrow. The barbed hardships and the going it alones. A whetstone for dulled attentions, a little edge against the deep blue tides. Focus on far horizons and a few choice exhortations. A chance to turn off the inside eyes.

The day each day weighs me down. The night all night gnaws at my tethers. All flaws and harrows. All painted in corners and clattering locks. Knowing the alone is only gaining momentum, and the woe isn’t even up to speed. Nothing to do but turn it into words. Nothing much to do at all.

It’s the sort of love that needs to step on your toes. It’s the sort of love that is bound to steal your sheets. It’s a crowd you in the kitchen, leave the room a wreck love. Only it lives where you never are, and it can’t find what it doesn’t know. It’s there with the lights on, worrying the floorboards in soliloquy. It’s there, wholeheartedly keeping company with the love left on. But for the moths, alone.

breadcrumbs

Unburdened by the weight of words, we carry a hard fall as we write our way out of the covenant of flesh to go ghosting off into untold tomorrows. The sentences we settle the sentences we serve, disembodied and in exact. Hopeful and grasping and every bit a construct. The parings left from such unruly vines. The strange and facile artifact of symbols strung on lightning. A coatrack full of borrowed garments and empty gestures.

This is our faith. Straw dry words left in the woods. Breadcrumbs left for the bugs and birds. Following the pointer finger. This constant litany of let’s sees. The deep night around the fire. This self proclaimed in plural.

Hash marks and hieroglyphs. This stippled semaphore. Alone with our urgencies and appetites, we work the telegraph, we sweat the bellows. Remaindered and left to hold our posts, here in this furthest station of the remedy. Waiting out forever at the tip of a stranger’s tongue. Unspoken and misunderstood. A light left on somewhere.

the ribbon and the road

The words wait, whether hue or tongue. The words swarm in, condense upon the objects, split up every sense. They fill in and gloss over. Each of them sad cavalcade and secret survivor. A sheepskin and a begging bowl. A ribbon and a road. A bin big enough for every secret. A djinn bound to be bidden.

It’s all been said, and it can never be said enough. The saying makes or breaks us, the way we whet our breath. The stars that have lit the first hard syllables still fixed in the transom of telling, long lonesome roads into reflection. The lies of the ancients that have lasted this long, to shape your mouth and set your heart to stumble and sprint. These stolen kisses and forbidden morsels. These mouthings and moans.

I speak them all, and think some more, and add your name to them. The long promenade, the omniscient gaze, the store of spells and enticements. This is where the long walk leaves me, limping through the wilderness, palming all that blooms and beckons. The weight of the play upon the players, but the words flying free. All these prayers and songs and poems trailing from root to roost. All the ways of saying so I can say your name and miss you.

meaningful attachments

They don’t think of you when the world grows quiet. They don’t remember you in their self conscious prayers. All the mementos left have been bagged, boxed, and added to the trash heap. The photos have been torn, burned, or deleted. History hasn’t registered you yet. The controversial monuments to your memory still unplanned, remain untoppled. Tomorrow is dust begotten.

You can’t trust the waveform you fit not to collapse. There is no urgency within to override. What you are certain is certain, all the rest of this guess work. There’s no marker for that mess. There’s no do over for that magnitude of meshugas. It’s not you, it’s the observable universe. Only the stories carry over.

Leave it for the ever after. Save it for the epilogue. Cold corners and lonesome outposts. A losing race to the more relentless of pursuits. Frame it with your culture heroes. This last prophecy, this time served. I saw it coming, but I believed it least.

ritual

Whatever way you fold the pillow, however you may pay the night, the clockwork keeps its count. The moon comes along spilling over, busying the shadows, ruffling the periphery. You are the cogwheel of this enchantment, you are the teeth of the tide. Words to pin back the wings of wonder. The instrument that lets the magic loose. You work the circle, you take your turn. The craft plus time served.

The moon makes with the glory. The moon heaps on the grace. The moon tells a story only you can know. You do the work, you count your blessed steps, you seal the deal by breath and blood. Each day a grinding away. The night filled by the sky.

The tense flesh, the rapt abandon. The step by step you set to. The rote descent of syllables, the spiral downward due with every step. There where you said you would be, waiting for the word.

places

Somewhere on the other side of the words, somewhere waiting behind the blanks, we are placed. This flesh, these wishes come unbidden, the magic that always wants us on our knees. Our role in the caper, the lines that are ours to drop, the world as viewed from the wings. The stage awaits, bright and unattended. The stage awaits, loosed by the cue. The world as turned and worn.

The stars strike their dwindling light, washed out by the looming of the moon. I’m locked in a room without windows. Boxed in by the insistent walls. Dusty light and crowds of shadow. A dirty mirror for company. All your lovers long since gone. All these years and still not off book. All these years and no lines to speak of to learn.

The mask is there to hold it all together. The mask is their to keep it going. The place held, the part taken. The words we are  wearing out. These lyric phrasings only go so far. We say our parts and find our marks. Our places only the start of the problem.

touchscreen

All the hours pass, a blur and a drag. The eyes spent on screens, thumb smudged and unproofed. This gaze unto, this longing on. These whispered anthems to bridled senses. The shine of particular skins. Fingers losing their facility to feel. Numb from following only want.

The loss sets in as the days slip past. All our slaughtered darlings, the markers orphaned of the map. It grieves us to learn and lose, love sticking to the edges of the passage into translation. It grieves us to be so small that our whole world can be swept away by the least breeze. Everything gone without a word.

All these buttoned-down fingers. All these remainders we rechristen in our image. The stories to warm us as we worm our way through the flesh of the world. To grace creation with our insistence, to place each flower in its tell-tale just so. What we say what we see, until we think of what we’d rather be. 

the crack in the ceiling

You make do with the ghost you’re given, the crack in the ceiling, the face on the moon. The story only grows as tall as it’s told. The weight you’re owed and the water you carry. The reel around the circle, the stars across the sky. You see something. You say something. The tide of night comes crashing down.

You wake up wet with dreaming. You wake up with the touch in tow. Glorious lights and pressing shadows, the ecstatic charge of flight still skipping through your blood. You breathe slow, these dreams still crisp and vivid. Your breath slows, this night still far from done.

I think of you through the drifts and the dreaming. I think of you while the myths march on. The cusp of the calling. The architecture of the lexicon. The star I fix with all my wishing. The stare unto certainty.The names we fix to clouds.

the distance people

We are born to words and signs. We watch out the windows, we wait by the phone. Sitting so still, the sky sweeps past us. Smears of stars and clouds. The blue hued harrow of every breath. The tightness unspoken in the chest, a burst of color always almost there. These hard turns and crabbed hands, letters moldering away. Alone, alone, alone.

Lock me up with ink and flowers. Send me to the remaindered places, the ones you’ve left for good. The stories that we tell ourselves to hold the days together. The stories we remember as we stare into the sky. The stars striking and the wheel a spin. The paths of the ancients and the parable calendar. The clock on the wall and the picture in a frame.

I would have words, but you’re always sleeping. I would have hope, but I never remember my dreams. I have grown old staring at screens. I have grown old watching the fall of years. Some strange case, some odd leanings. A heart choking lonesome and the scrolling of smoke. Tripping on my injuries and mumbling verse and curses. Stones in my pockets and the search for a cause. The light that finds me too bright and tactless, I turn into the myth of night.

open casket

The time has passed, the deed’s been done. Reddened eyes and tear slick faces, the empty husk and the hollow ritual. All that was given long gone. Dusty shelves of books unmoved, tchotchkes and orphaned keys, the laden name dead on the tongue. Love just another word laid waste.

This is an exercise in the futile, the banality of the choices still left. Check the figures, fill in the forms, what is there to keep you warm? Wind and wishes and the spider striped ceiling. Heartaches and mementos and the rats in the walls.

Write it down to keep the record. Write it down to work it out. It all comes down to the bent of the reader. It all comes down to the work and the pain. The crowds with all their gods and ghosts, fool’s prayers and loaded fragments. Weep away, we are always leaving. Weep away, we were always lost. The name never spoken, a life like footprints taken by the tide.