shuffle

The day is slowly sinking into the strata, the bashful blue sky soaking up the sun, spring tumbling head over heels from root to shoot. Something for the shine, something for the smolder, something for the memory of the match. From scorched fingers from playing with fire to the cold bones dragged through the depths of the atmosphere, this form rings with songs and ghosts. From scrub jay pretending in the pine to the tobacco drawl drowsing beneath the smoke on my tongue, the day sparks and strays. Old earbuds plugged into my phone, I give in to the sophistries of the mechanism and let the daemon stack the deck. Song after song going through the motions. The illusion of movement by changing up the tempo. The mood leaning hard on the gaffed stack and gleaned blood.

The music sets off reveries and memories and strange montages, rented momentum to call through the core, breaks and bends in the signal sent straight through the flesh. The tune occludes the moment, raising revenants and herding ghosts, picking notes and pressing chords here in the meat and bone. The song a hoarded moment and a renaissance, old and new and probably something blue, the world taking some strange shapes where the spirit bunches up. This sieve of blood and happenstance and the husk of the tongue. The trick within the algorithm, the busy architecture giving form to the slipping, the bouquet of selves gathered by the old song and dance. 

Days turn into decades, the search becomes the story, motive just another slab holding down your grave. Our small doings, our faded names, these gardens of memory and stone. The seasons blur and the fires fade, a memento trailing flesh and words, the one and done or the slow dissolve from agent to object. The flourish and the riffle, the palm and the pass. The choosing is always a force or a gaffe. You do a little shimmy, you throw a slide in, maybe show some leg with that shake. Here deep in the dwindle all we do is dance. Parts and pieces, the hollows of the passage through form and feel, the light left on so we don’t miss a trick. It all goes wrong. Caught in the tempo of the tide, we flicker as we fade. Someone else comes along until every turn is taken.