The day is as empty as the sky, the wind runs wild with grace. Dust swirls in detail devils across the dirty porch. The eaves are laden with webs and wasps, rotting in slow neglect. The rats have gnawed through everything, through wire and through wood. The angels have murdered the greater good, every flag a tatters, every soul a shambles. I am the long gone ghost, the fly speck punctuation. All the songs exclude me, all the blessings bent against my name. I speak and no one listens. That’s about right for a late American life.
Fill your mouth with your favorite prayers, empty your head with efficacious meditations, no one’s asking for your say. The heavens have gone enigmatic, running silent or scared off by the burdensome truth. The ones that want only want some other, the ones you love have left you with letters meant to hurt. There is no law but fill your hands, your money or your life. My heart objects as organs do, too much too little too late. I say your name as if it matters, spitting only to water the weeds.
I will no longer work the ephemera of my longing. I will no longer spill my words in the temple of lost causes and bad habits, no silly rabbits to reframe my empty as if it’s art. The wounds of all the years of low living and high lonesomes will remain in this uncared for cage, these pages where no one looks. This shameful accounting of these uncooked books, the ache that eludes just like the ones who left avoid, my skin all sin and giving up. Need and want and the trinkets left in guilt and contempt. The song I hum along to while I wait for the last bitter line, my voice another memory forgotten overnight.
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