out of the blue

The trees sway a ruddy green stencil casting in my first glance mind tiny bouquets of sky blue blossoms of blue sky, a brief startle from the spark to the cognition, another moment where my first words go so terribly wrong. Casting away illusion for the next perception in line, the say so of my senses another unreliable narrator, still I try my hand at tuning into the sloppy seconds of the signal. The pieces I pick and choose, the pursuit of lie and line, the slick simplicity of the symbols that ring true. I say it is more story, I say that it’s a poem. But it’s only the smoke of the moment we burn and fuel. The shadow saddened by what the sun has missed. The absent guest, the empty setting.

We worry at the impossible while the ordinary provides plenty of limits to go around. Making proclamations to posterity that won’t ever cross tomorrow’s shores. Declaring our trajectories in arrows fired blindly toward the star specked sky, casualties and consequences freed by our self service, each of us easily so broken on our own and still insisting on the solo. We throw low blows and elbows to get beaten about the map. Sticking to the script of the deceivers, each of us alone responsible for protecting our neck. Legions of us, taken out one by one by the words of kings and gods. We have been shown the world, and have trained in the mystery.

What’ve I got left to say but the same old thing worn thin by ten thousand tongues and endless letters? Every day passes in brutal form, by name and number they tumble by, moon phase and featured constellation another sigh and ache. Sitting outside and dwindling with every breath, less with every lungful of smoke, eventually each of us all consequence as our stories dissolve. Voice and vapor, I sit in perpetual discontentment, the ache of is and the deeper hurt of is not. There are words of every stripe and flavor waiting to be dismembered and transformed. Skins of every description to creep into, all manner of pleasure to promise, every wish imaginable to grant. Tricks to how we long and tick, our fortunes stolen for otherworldly investors and all you grifters grubbing after crowns. The more I witness, the more I ought to keep to myself. Leave you to whatever heaven you would have.