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.