the moon in the sea

There is a distant prayer of crickets, a grace just cracked in ice. The last glimpse had of that wanton moon, the first word said in vain. The yapping of the window dogs riffles off the houses, stilt-walks through these rivers of light. You awake at once, remembering no dream. Just one thing certain forever to elude.

The whole clamber of your body mutters, the give and take of nature films or movie chimps. A yawn grown from forgotten slights to the spine. A breath secured by allowing yourself that ease where all breathing is held in suspense. The secret machines and first strike industries buried beneath the skin of the waking world. The joy and dread of all that is possible.

So go the sandwich boards. That apocalyptic picket, that doomsday prophet of cartoon ink. I cut my missives from ransom note newspapers. My speech is as clipped as wings. What I saw I could never recapture. What I foreswore I could never escape. So I preach to the growing silence. I preach to the moon in the sea.

flicker

The hour burns low, the questions on a boil. How bright the night, how weary this flesh so worn and ruthless? The sky so far and tattered, the moon too high and white. The stars flicker, just common sparks adrift. The wind spills and scatters, whispering secrets lost to the moment. The curtains puff and billow, sails lilting in the filtered light.

The air stills, the room goes quiet. The walls lean in, soft with dust and shadows. If only the heart could slow and pause. If only the night would curl up and sleep. My hands are dry and restless, following some unseen webs, crippled spiders crawling blind. My eyes just pace and wander, sifting through the differences between the surface and the shine.

I stick to the uncertain places. I cling to the world through salt and thirst, through aimlessness and appetite. My skin remembering only by sharp and burn, by itch and absence. Each moment filling in for the slipped soul of the last. Each thought caught upon the flutter of some wishing star. The world gone away, the room as far as I can see.

blue smoke blue

She sings softly, swaying along the slumbering fault lines. She moves slowly, unaware of the halo crows are painting against the wind or the song that stalks her wake. I see her from beneath this tide of drowning skies, this unblinking dream of distant nations and strange tongues. All the stories trailing off towards the horizon, separating from the smoke and the song. All the lines tangled together and knotted along similar skins.

Some days it is the comfort of the fire, the shared circle and the journey of the word. Some days it is the ritual of the switchback and the cradling of the flame. The whole wide world just wait and wander. The open spaces and the sprayed-on sky. I watch through the lens of burned down bridges. Her spell is sown upon the wind.

I do not know from prayers and presses. I do not know from siren spell or lullaby. I carry the poem and the tailings of dusk. I coddle the spark and the witness of falling stars. The lonesome edge tangled along the border of the night. Those flickers of heaven mingled with fresh ash. Blue smoke blue staining the failing day.

compass

The mocking bird makes its last complaint along the bitter dregs of the day. It will not wait for the sky to tell it that final confession blue. It can not pause for the seamless dismantling of the smoke. To fly is to fly, to burn is to burn. Everything else is only echos in the green limbs. The reach of want, the stretch towards the tense of the sun.

You are that mystery of flight, pacing the wire above all useful doubt. You are the smell of coconut and sunburn, the scent of high holiday amidst the salt and sand. Dusk clings to your horizon, slip-thin and tight about your hips. Out in the long shadows I watch your remission. In the long pause towards midnight you are all the shine I see.

But this is not the kingdom of poetry, that vetting the prettiest mistakes by light and tongue. The season is grass fires and sudden storms, the streets flecked with dreamers and the under-employed. There is no grace in the feel of empty hands, the grasp of the distance between word and deed. You are farther still than any star, my latest favor and furthest conceit. The night arrives, the doors are closed. Windows open to any breath or bright.

red

The moon hangs there, unfinished in the cooling blue, that last fruit left bending the limbs of the tree of sky. A dull stone, sinking slowly away from the trend of daylight, falling again and again outside the call of this burdened earth. A fractured beacon claiming more than its portion of sight. Yet another task incomplete, settled on the red side of the ledger.

Claim each chain that binds you, own each blade that burrows towards your blood. The work of the world will go on without you. The work of your life will always be just one more task, just one more try. Worn down by idle talk and unskilled labor, you slow as the change draws down on you. Worn through by bad thoughts and broken flesh, you are surprised you are still standing when the motion unfolds. The change takes you, but you leave what marks you may.

There is no respite, there is no consolation. Every victory leaves you little but alive. There is no room for effort squandered, no room for all these wasted days. The days gone to their graves will not rise again. The moon does not care for your worries, the sun does not keep track of your complaints. They rise and set, their time table eternal from our vantage, their duties ancient and unknowable. Every day there is one day less, every night you heal a little slower. The words fizzle and spark. The ends certain to sort you out, whatever that might mean.

a curse

I am singing a song I carved from the bones of your name. I am painting the night with flecks of spit and flurries of curses. There is a hole gnawed through the story. There is a ghost burning at the stake through your heart. The weary fluidics of tongue and soul, spell checks of gods and burial rituals, florid portraits of the world worn inside-out. The miss too long by far, that hallowed absence that burns and burns all the words away.

It is true that I am greedy, it is certain I am jealous, taking every gift of yours as sheer theft. The devil of the details, that hell in other people. Glib inversions meant to jostle the tired driver. Silly glimpses of depths never to be reached for, explicit versions of every dull lullaby, a hint or flicker of nothing noted yet again. I admit no courage, claim no faith. That need to promise as much as naked confession of words previously laid broken. That call of innocence that last refuge in spades and gardens. I bathe in these accusations of ill intent.

It is still that vivid gravity of your step and pause, that etching of reach and retreat. Your every freeze an exclamation, your every hesitation a dance. You fall and fall and make it feel like soaring. I sour at my limits, blanche at the weakness that beats in waves. You radiate such honest blessings you are bound to draw down fire. All the guts and gristle of you, all the heaped flesh and red bones of your beauty. Somehow flecked with cinders and dust, I sing your bright demise.

a promise

The question of the day is answered in sweat and smoke. The cool weight of the waxing moon, the sway of leaf and star. The prayers pause, the players change, and the night bares her dark shoulders. The skies fill with wishes, the streets all scuffed and staggered. I wait, as if there was an hour of arrival. I wait, as if there was a time to tell.

The house is still sweltering, the tiny rooms still crowded with stifling air. The dogs pant beneath the oscillating fan, sprawled in the dark. I am marked by heat and excess, tainted in flesh and breath. The open window near me gasps and puffs, the grubby curtains beside me filling and collapsing with the whim of the wind. The cool air mingles before it succumbs, the heat the only measure it makes. I taste the flat rancor of my own tongue, taste the ragged cut of my own brittle teeth. Every moment a flavor all its own, each bitten sliver another reason to spit.

A song plays softly, some sweet trifle of romance and longing, plucked and bowed and sang to precious pieces. A tender sharpness that follows the fault-lines of my heart. A note sung just so, a temblor invoked along hidden scars. A human voice enchanted from sparks and digits, a picture of some terrible beauty shining straight on through. Magic so readily distilled, so easily taken for granted. Love and art, struggle and triumph. A map of some kingdom that seems so far it ought to be on the moon for all the distance I have leveraged against it. A promise so like all the reasons I promise nothing at all.