due

They come along when it costs a lot. They come along like clockwork on the calendar, like the maze of days and dropped dimes, the glistening web and the hard once over. It’s the beat of the feet kicking rocks, it is the tamped dirt of the scheduled stomp, the spade called out at the worm’s cruel turn. Call crow, call clouds, call thunder, the earth beneath so much body cost and shout out. The bout comes down to you and whatever trouble’s around, the aspect you’re afforded and the angle of attack, the naked limbs and the crown of snips and silk. They show up too late for much more than tactics, greasy fingers all prise and please, the will already imbued with flesh enough. Arrive with the sky in tow, arrive with the guns ablaze. This day is all but done, only time left due to do. 

It’s enough that the day showed up like it was day. It’s enough that we remember what wasn’t enough. The sad tumult of horns, the break around the rhythm, this unscored melody this uninked turn. Where we weren’t, again and again. Where the lights lingered, where the map went unminded. The words on out, the silence back in. The only circuit that’s ever connected, the switch that gets left on. Monkey see, monkey shun. Monkey knows what monkey’s done. The sky so cold and open. The music running down.

The gravity adds up it you just give it a minute or two. The mass is always on the move, this joint is always jumping, it shakes out with maracas if you want. The sky guns grim as the sun melts away west, cold and gray and full of rumors. The cup is emptied, the hands go numb. The words shuffle around in stacks and skins, stretched thin and stitched tight, the good lucks and good nights. You breathe deep enough to catch up to the script and loose a little spirit. You breathe deep and send steam to heaven, warm flesh and gray plume. You stretch out and it all comes due.