the names we know

 The clock started before anyone showed up, the flag was waved before the racers knew to race. The sky goes by, the songs get shuffled, we watch and we mitigate. Perched behind the circumstances, caught by the read of the room, the rhythm right on top before we knew what hit. The day smudged by the read of the ritual, smoke towards the portents, flies to the flesh. The mind weighs in against the insistent press of becoming, the scribbling in the margins, the writing in the smoke. The spin of the wheel, the graven bones, the long walk home. The streets we follow, the names we know. 

The breeze has its moments, the coffee dark and hot to the swallow, the liberties taken by invertebrates. Every feeling comes a tumble, every thought caught in the heat of the scrap, the incense in the air wings on high. Every term always last legging it, every word a terminal case, the gravity of the next story, the levity of the telling. Shadows slowly fleshed out, dreams breathed into the cypher, the mood wielded by a tempered breath. The next magic and the next and the next. The broken and the brittle, kindling cracked and fire crackled, the becoming held tight by the moon. You have to say the name out loud. You have to spill as atmosphere awaits. 

The bandwidth is running thick, the frequencies are waking up, barely a blinking and it’s already more than we can match. The languages and rectories, the magic and the magnetic, the voice and a smidgeon of vision. The stricture of structure, the places and the instruments, the way the spoken carries. We speak out of turn, our words always at a rush, the mettle and the cadence. We speak out our ghosts and our galleys, running down the hallway opening all the doors. We speak after the last was spoken, and are turned at once to salt, the spilling of the smoke. Say it loud, speak it plainly. The sun is on its way down, the moon has yet to show.