Rust devours every tool. The weeds have won the yard. Every season has its prayers and litter, to cover up the landscape and scatter to the wind. I type with such brittle skin, tight as a drum, desolate as a tomb. The air touches my flesh with its cool dry cadaver's kiss, rewarding survival with whatever blight is convenient. The dusk fills with mosquitoes and stars.
It is that first music, this pull and sway of wind, this gather and release of weather. Those skintight rhythms, bodies bound to become the song, singing all breath and blood and the livid air. We gather in small conspiracies and unwound mobs, we turn from crowd to couple to wandering gaze without missing a step. In full stride that music finds us, woven seamlessly into life's vast tapestry.
The air is certain of our disrepair, faces lined and leathered, drinking every tear. We dissolve slowly into the earth and open sky, wind and soil taking their portions. There will always be sacrifice. This price is something money cannot belay. Our vicious whispers, our orphaned eyes, staring into a dense digital oblivion. Bones ache, bandwidth reaching out through every limb. We rust beneath this empty night, breathing each measure in, exhaling our angels into the depths of the sky.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
cohesion
The ants always win, gambling with their lives. That endless crawl towards possibility becoming eventually life itself. That clarity of hunger and aim, the trails towards feast and oblivion. That endless procession that reward the patience to change. They are devout in their clamorings, rigorous in their rituals. Victory is only the plural of all mistakes and the paths that stay true.
I distill these stolen words, these half-blind observations, smoke seeping into the greedy wind. The dust littered with sprouts and ash. The lingering of a phrase, that warning of some distant fire. The things I say, I will say again, as I break and break against the new. Some breathless promise, some tidy phrase, the effortless way my praise has of finding you.
We ripen in our excesses, in the things we must simply take too far. We always learn, seldom the right lesson, almost never by heart. It takes crowds and walls, strays and fences. It takes border guards to enforce the fantasy of borders. It takes only words to reenforce our most cherished fictions. Nothing noble, nothing pure. We keep what works, the rest decays into myth. These swarms of stories, these golden days.
I distill these stolen words, these half-blind observations, smoke seeping into the greedy wind. The dust littered with sprouts and ash. The lingering of a phrase, that warning of some distant fire. The things I say, I will say again, as I break and break against the new. Some breathless promise, some tidy phrase, the effortless way my praise has of finding you.
We ripen in our excesses, in the things we must simply take too far. We always learn, seldom the right lesson, almost never by heart. It takes crowds and walls, strays and fences. It takes border guards to enforce the fantasy of borders. It takes only words to reenforce our most cherished fictions. Nothing noble, nothing pure. We keep what works, the rest decays into myth. These swarms of stories, these golden days.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
the king of sad mountain
The blank page is imagined. A wind that descends like a seabird on some landlocked town, a gull bitterly voicing its contempt for what the sea does not provide. It falls in wave after wave of failed words, it gathers, a slice of static freed in the mind. Some sort of ritual or homage, a remainder from a language long lost, a notion from that place where history and reality were the same. It is the press of gap and time, the dismay of creation awaiting.
I never knew you before your apostasy, can not name the claim that changed you. Only the agnosis of your gaze, that fire that makes one ache for burning. Somehow always upon that cusp of the flag set aflame and the native anthem, always dancing on the brink of some perpetual fall. Something in the weight of lips parted, in that fateful glimpse of ready teeth. Something in the argument you always were, in the condition I was always in.
Here on sad mountain we always await each change in the sky, our heads rising in flitting hope. The roads are slow and often end in apathy, some little room, some dying light. We huddle in the icy light, we burn in the heartless dusk. We say what we say as if in jest or prayer, all this air going somewhere, all this world dissolving into time. We scatter our words, wanting others.
I never knew you before your apostasy, can not name the claim that changed you. Only the agnosis of your gaze, that fire that makes one ache for burning. Somehow always upon that cusp of the flag set aflame and the native anthem, always dancing on the brink of some perpetual fall. Something in the weight of lips parted, in that fateful glimpse of ready teeth. Something in the argument you always were, in the condition I was always in.
Here on sad mountain we always await each change in the sky, our heads rising in flitting hope. The roads are slow and often end in apathy, some little room, some dying light. We huddle in the icy light, we burn in the heartless dusk. We say what we say as if in jest or prayer, all this air going somewhere, all this world dissolving into time. We scatter our words, wanting others.
Friday, February 4, 2011
coercion
It begins, clinging like summer cotton, that breath of flesh and fever. The sun smeared across these small epiphanies of steel and pavement, the sky always going somewhere. The travel across these set pieces of speed and drama is that masque where the dance is always trailing off, lost in limb and thought. The empty tribute of life to these labors of vain abandon, the romance that is always smoldering in your eyes.
Dusk weighs in, stippled with stars. The flocks fly towards some distant roost, alight on graceful silhouette wings. The trees sway, their limbs all reach and spirit. The shadows engulf each empty space, touching every surface, holding all things close. Smoke spills and curls, proof of some grinding fire. Strangers wander past with the labored gait of ghosts.
It ends, fleeing like winter light, that breath of ice and absence. The stars spill along fence and rail, the sky trawling the sea and fields. All this wander, worn shoes and troubling stones, roads and homes and woods. The shambling of unseen beasts the only music evident in this wide open world. The promise of another day, the rhythm that is always sounding through your veins.
Dusk weighs in, stippled with stars. The flocks fly towards some distant roost, alight on graceful silhouette wings. The trees sway, their limbs all reach and spirit. The shadows engulf each empty space, touching every surface, holding all things close. Smoke spills and curls, proof of some grinding fire. Strangers wander past with the labored gait of ghosts.
It ends, fleeing like winter light, that breath of ice and absence. The stars spill along fence and rail, the sky trawling the sea and fields. All this wander, worn shoes and troubling stones, roads and homes and woods. The shambling of unseen beasts the only music evident in this wide open world. The promise of another day, the rhythm that is always sounding through your veins.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
bone structure
Life's a mystery. The stars venture us only ghosts, so far and sharp and brittle. Hinting only of a depth that we could not see. Whispering mass through every scar and fissure. The beauty is always the hardest part, out here where the words thin down.
I grant your grace is mostly architectural, that modest posture strictly always swaying, acknowledging the weight of weather, the pallid hand of atmosphere in filling out the differences. I see the thought built into that honest skull, so bright with that act of burning. You hold still, as if in flight. You cast shadows with a gentle smile. It is the strength with which you cease to wear the world.
It is true, though that isn't why I say it. I am honest though all these reasons are wrong. The gravity of this want that awakes these needs with-in me. How faithfully you hold all these secrets, these conspiracies of love and limits. How artfully you dodge the answer that can only make you whole. You are lovely in these bounds and breaks. The moon hidden above mountains in winter. The winds embracing the breadth of the ocean each night.
I grant your grace is mostly architectural, that modest posture strictly always swaying, acknowledging the weight of weather, the pallid hand of atmosphere in filling out the differences. I see the thought built into that honest skull, so bright with that act of burning. You hold still, as if in flight. You cast shadows with a gentle smile. It is the strength with which you cease to wear the world.
It is true, though that isn't why I say it. I am honest though all these reasons are wrong. The gravity of this want that awakes these needs with-in me. How faithfully you hold all these secrets, these conspiracies of love and limits. How artfully you dodge the answer that can only make you whole. You are lovely in these bounds and breaks. The moon hidden above mountains in winter. The winds embracing the breadth of the ocean each night.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
seduction
There is nothing that does not nettle. The way your skin radiated sunlight, the way your hair smelled of the sea, all those tangled nights so near to forever. That this life is traffic and missteps, that the winter sun will burn my flesh, that I am bound to this world by the tensile strength of beauty and dreams. My opening bid is that of adversary. My opening line is almost always goodbye.
The moon is all but gone, and the winter has settled its teeth into my flesh. The rooftops are dusted with constellations, the glimmering remnants of campfire stories and origin myths. Each street begins another tale, every sidewalk is littered with indifference. Cars drive by, into and away from the night. The hour waxes as the moment wanes. I haven't a thing to say.
There is too much living left swaddled in steel. There is too much time wasted punching a sorry clock. A soul boiled down to sentiment and vitriol clanks and steams along. Tell me there is a difference that will leaven the sum of all these partings. Tell me there are bullets left to shut off all this light. Tomorrow lingers just past the horizon, an oath of warmed air and bent tongue. Someone is waiting, a dreamer made of faith and fevers. Something is coming, an aim masquerading as an end.
The moon is all but gone, and the winter has settled its teeth into my flesh. The rooftops are dusted with constellations, the glimmering remnants of campfire stories and origin myths. Each street begins another tale, every sidewalk is littered with indifference. Cars drive by, into and away from the night. The hour waxes as the moment wanes. I haven't a thing to say.
There is too much living left swaddled in steel. There is too much time wasted punching a sorry clock. A soul boiled down to sentiment and vitriol clanks and steams along. Tell me there is a difference that will leaven the sum of all these partings. Tell me there are bullets left to shut off all this light. Tomorrow lingers just past the horizon, an oath of warmed air and bent tongue. Someone is waiting, a dreamer made of faith and fevers. Something is coming, an aim masquerading as an end.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
memoir
The day winds down, the night is loosed-- something seems a bit familiar. Outside the wind clatters, the voice of the atmosphere, the reach of the sky. I know I have seen this before. The depth of shadow, the thrust of cement. The roads that run and run. Maybe it's only me, but I am pretty sure I have done this to death.
The words are only the symptoms. They are strung along on unwashed flesh, they bead like grease or water. They compound and aggregate, they swarm upon the skins of things both visible and hidden from detection. They are eager to leave the things that anchor, trying to become the meaning themselves. It is this vast chasm that grants the shape that saying makes us long after. The notion that there are reasons for too many words, or too few.
I am bone tired, sick of much of what each day has to offer. Not much of a sieve sort a story from the gleanings of this world. Not much of a wright to straighten out the weathered timbers and the splintered beams. Just an unreliable narrator muttering through the tyranny of the ordinary. Not the average, just the mean existence. A cliche of a cliche. A language cobbled together from grunts and screams, written in slow circles, speaking only of itself.
The words are only the symptoms. They are strung along on unwashed flesh, they bead like grease or water. They compound and aggregate, they swarm upon the skins of things both visible and hidden from detection. They are eager to leave the things that anchor, trying to become the meaning themselves. It is this vast chasm that grants the shape that saying makes us long after. The notion that there are reasons for too many words, or too few.
I am bone tired, sick of much of what each day has to offer. Not much of a sieve sort a story from the gleanings of this world. Not much of a wright to straighten out the weathered timbers and the splintered beams. Just an unreliable narrator muttering through the tyranny of the ordinary. Not the average, just the mean existence. A cliche of a cliche. A language cobbled together from grunts and screams, written in slow circles, speaking only of itself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)