contretemps

I’m a stranger here myself, however long I loiter. Here when the earthquake came like the beating of urgent wings against the windowpane, here when the earthquake was ripples bucking through the rocks, the bridge collapse and the baseball game. Somewhere waving with the trees, somewhere weeping in the dusk. I move in drags and starts, slow motion and jump cut, ache and negation and the burdens of the beast. I never knew, or at least never know better. I sit alone for eons and wonder at your front door. Some scuff or tiff, and all at once it’s eons more. 

I’m not indifferent to the machine. I try to take a path that is at least not immediately made up mostly of other people’s toes. I read the room and say my goodbyes, if I say anything at all. I’m better at conflict, the bump and grind of heads and hips, the ground and pound and the contretemps. It’s easier to play the heel, hamming it up before their champions, working the hurt. It’s easier to run off the rails than to jump off the rampaging train. The tack taken from the top.

It’s early here, though the sun at last feels a little long in the tooth, and the sky needs to shade its eyes to see. It’s strings of words and flecks of ash, the sore in your shoulders, the stiff in your breath. It’s the stretch of blue shadows and the breeze through the beard. Long ago the spell was cast, the fire on the mountaintop, the storm within your flesh. Brush strokes of gold and green, the slide between shade and shine. One more leaning deep towards the intention, one more altar littered with cinders.