There is no grace to the day’s labors, broken sweat and burning sun. There is no satisfaction in place of compensation, no good hurt to the feeble form. Just another story of chance and frailty, the hands available only these two. There is neither strength of back and thew, or that of will and spirit. It’s just another last labor, a trembling unto death. The fearsome heat and the withering shadow. The betrayals near and far.
The night cools with the moon still waiting. The night comes with open eyes and empty hands. The fan pelting marbled flesh, the coffee cooling in the cup. The music is on shuffle, slipping around on the floor in its socks. The portrait above the laurels of the patriarch outshining its dull subject, a brilliant work of heart and art by a casual heartbreaker. The picture squinting its eternal lean of contempt, the reminder that this is indeed how you’re seen. The nothing much stinging with every glance.
You live long enough in contempt and derision, you mostly take it in stride. The fortitude to take arms against every ocean that arises to rub you out long gone. The power has gone out. The love all grit and gravel and the boot to the teeth. Torn flesh and wilted limbs, the old songs slide on by laughing and shaking their heads. How funny to think there was a way in the world where the music was for you. How sad to think your foolish life would be worth something all the sudden. A comic book or a cubist masterpiece left in some attic, wanted despite all the years of disinterest and neglect. The light of recognition after so long in the dark. Your only value whatever is left to extract, blood and sweat to the last ragged breath. Sledge and bar, pick and shovel swung beneath the uncaring sky, without any aid in sight.
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