turnover

The day comes down to the color of the shadow of an unseen wing, some lovely lilt of speed and virtuosity, dried flowers foundering in the dust. A lounging in the liturgy at the easing into sin. The achy breaky breath and the bitter to the bones. The long haul all hosannas and are we there yets, the take away something about how every stranger looks the same. The clerk resigned to their midnight counter, the driver across the gas station isle that pays at the pump and never looks your way. So down the dark hall or swinging from the family tree we go, saying names and taking notes. The smoke seeping through the firmament, the gone there trembling still reaching from back when. 

There’s the joke and there’s the way you land it. There’s the crash footage as the narrative marches on. Some flame in the wilderness, some saying about the way things go. The cast that are killed off, the cast that are written out, the parts other players replace, the roles abandoned after the irreplaceable got lost. I am slow to learn new roles, and insist on first refusal. All my craft is absent or outdated, and I am resistant to giving up my shtick. Sometimes the punchline gets you square in the chops.

Heaven help the meek and mild. Heaven help us grumblers crushed beneath the heel. A chill in the wind sends a shiver through the shins, a scarecrow propped up on brittle pins, the vulnerable right on top of it. Slumped shouldered and earthward eyed, I tumble clumsily from step to step. Spilling down the shoulders of the the moment as it arrives, falling into so much untangled dust. The waver of the bandwidth, the uncertain purchase of the words. Come the lonesome, come the hunger. Come lust, come slumber as the meter turns over. Wander away with the world.