kingdom gone

There are no mice, there are no men, just the scratching rats as the chord progression is filled in. A soft flatter of words on the wing, the usual waste of space and breath, a trudge up and down the steps. A little sick about the seams, a little sea foam flecking lips, the tongue somehow does alright. A prophecy of the imminent tide, rising to foreclose hope, gazing at the moon with a dash of Mars. The dusty fables of some ancient reign stippled across the stars. It takes a lifetime, it takes endless retellings. From wished upon to once upon, thy kingdom come, thy kingdom gone. 

It’s discontented, though not nearly as winter as winter can get. It’s the tune that it takes to get to the one you sing. It’s the story they built before the bones of your telling was set. The cadence of a work song built on lost labors, or the myths that got stuck in the stars, you hum a few bars and the fix is in. A thought that will last past the words that entangled it, a thought that won’t last to the end of this sentence. Sights are set, knobs are toggled, a variety of variables awaiting the phrasing. Something in the rhyme can’t carry a tune, something like the beaming of the cow-cleared moon.

Buds weigh the boughs, the sky shapes the crown in grief tinged blues and rainy day grays, the cold aura of the reaching green splitting the seams of sight and soil. Gravity is incremental, it works it’s way down into the languished mass, it gathers its sway straw by straw. A sheaf of wheat, a bright bouquet, a quiver of arrows to sling outrageous. The ink is imagined in by pen line and brushstroke, in stitch and spasm and spill. Soon the days grow swift and fierce, the crow calls get further and further away. The cold in the bones becomes the rule rather than the rather, some season of staggering almost theres, the street all but aching from so much empty all at once. This singing, so strained and plaintive as it ends.