stricken

We start out where the day is spent, night fresh treads and the course of decorations. We start out with the cigar burning odd and the flower startlingly noncommittal. I pass around my unwanted jokes and unpersuasive poems, notes that never make it up the row, missives that a few cruel teachers might read aloud but mostly they just throw away. The night already knows, but I don’t listen. The night’s not saying, but it knows I’m over.

The sky is washed in unintended light, the city spill yet another strike, smoke gathers before going walk about with Mars on bold display. Fireworks and Christmas lights, inadvisable gatherings, and the spirits largely literal. My appetites remain unpersuaded, my appetites remain aloof, the word’s turn untaken in the rising night. So I smoke over the mutterings of blood and ghost. So I sit listening to loose belts and flattening tires, flesh hungry from root to crown. Stone to star, missing that much more.

Time is passed in the spitting of leaf and the stirring of embers, breath and smoke and all the unseen stars. A raised voice now and again, songs and snips of conversations, a conversion table for all the chattering ghosts. Fragments and phrases and credo written bold and clear. Symbols and incantations and sparks smoldering in the vestments. Time in tall trees and little fires, fleeting and filling in the blanks. The adoring and the adoration broken off at the root, endings and cinders and the breathing in the burn. Another one and done, and the night doesn’t even break its stride. The worn through words, the promised stars.