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.