grindstone

The words are left to set a spell, heavy in the ephemera, gnawing at the grace. The heart keeps time in wishful thinking, beating back the tide. These glad rags and quick hands only slap boxing the half of it, the rest continuity sacrificed to the mystery. Eyes closed, eyes closed— somehow this has become the road, the figuring on the wrong side of the seams. The drag out knocked down to the physics, the depth of weary flesh and stubborn bone, ghosts and guts and everything touched by the flow of blood. The turn around into another round, this grating orbit again through walls of stick and stone. The words all that’s left of the hurt of the turn.

Back to the creases on the map, the blanked out names along the seams, the streets that got lost in the folds. Back to the landscape, back to the land, the earth and her fits and stirs. The convoy of drawling traffic Sunday driving on a Saturday afternoon, a lazy dragon haphazardly getting the lay of the board. Old bones crossed at broken passes beneath worn out wards, the history of the fall of a beast, the weather and the whip. Another cursed number on the cursor. Another year through this narrow loop.

So it goes with each round sung louder. So the dance as the reel runs wild. The habitual turned to ritual turn to the engine that drives the wheel. All this talk around the terminal, all the writing on the walls. Nothing to do with the empty cup when the cup runneth over with empty. Nothing to do with the hunger trapped in the walls clawed down all around. These uncontended bones, this polished obsolescence. Only the smoke that drawls along behind the burning. The grinding away of what was left of the day when all the days are over. The routine is all that’s left on.