The daylight stasis is released into the rolling tide of dusk, bee-line reasons and blood sugar debates. The shine sticking to the wild leaf and the wicked bottle fly, the last moments of daylight spread between the tall trees and the wide horizon. Wed to one thing, then shed of another. The sweat beaded on burnt flesh cools in the rising wind.
There is no denying it. The words can be bled, the meanings blended. Explanation and excuse can dance arm and arm in the busty street. The things said can not be undone. It is the nature of how nature unwinds between happenstance and mind. Every day sows some future reaping of regret. Every day ends unrequited.
I wash my hands, feeling dry despite the deluge falling into the basin. I dry them, feeling like I am wearing gloves of paper. Energy conserved for the long downhill slide. Inertia impacting both the stillness and the ride. Again the dose of plastic letters. Again the trembling of hands very nearly at rest. Everything happening just in time for the restless night.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
escape
Give me your gaze that I might disappoint and dissipate. Give me your eyes that I may melt away before them. This is the cue to count all those blessings. This is the call to wish the moon away. These words stray and fade, scattered all about the room. This breath peals and wavers, the air so slick and fleeting. All the world has gone away again.
So your spirit breaks, ice clattering from the tray. So your flesh fails, beaded with salt and sweat. The reasons were never there to begin with. The reasons came latest, so never worry their loss. All these spells and lullabies cling to your curtains. All these dreams scratched into your itchy skin. The magic is all but gone, only the residue sticking to your trail. Only evidence of the compulsion to remember.
We are the remainders of a faded age, the creation of some vaguely fabled age. We are the scribbles in the margins, the rules always crossed out and then written once again. Such insistent ink that no eyes can abide us. Such tethered hopes that no grace can escape these bonds. Once entangled, there was never a chance for our escape. The mistake and the measure. The wayward fool and the undying sun.
So your spirit breaks, ice clattering from the tray. So your flesh fails, beaded with salt and sweat. The reasons were never there to begin with. The reasons came latest, so never worry their loss. All these spells and lullabies cling to your curtains. All these dreams scratched into your itchy skin. The magic is all but gone, only the residue sticking to your trail. Only evidence of the compulsion to remember.
We are the remainders of a faded age, the creation of some vaguely fabled age. We are the scribbles in the margins, the rules always crossed out and then written once again. Such insistent ink that no eyes can abide us. Such tethered hopes that no grace can escape these bonds. Once entangled, there was never a chance for our escape. The mistake and the measure. The wayward fool and the undying sun.
Monday, August 1, 2011
spectrum
Dragonflies dart over the trickling rivers of traffic, metallic over metal, sheen over shine. Sweat drizzles down my face, sweat soaks my shirt. All the colors are still cooking, bent towards the bandwidth of this color blindness, the blended measures and fitful resonance my sight allows. All the colors revealing the comity between light and matter. The collaborative dirge of existence settling on the unchangeable stripe and the unseemly trope.
We erase our mistakes when we tell these stories, or repurpose the facts to fit the fables we endorse. It is always that best of all possible fib, that notion that even our wrongs are right. So we claim the virtue seat despite all our bile and venom. So we cling to a righteousness we can not know despite our vicious hearts. Invisible kings, and golden rules we would sooner break than follow. We color it all in greens and golds despite the darkness of our hearts.
I am only a series of dismal efforts and crass oaths. I am only the motion of the season and the sickness, the propriety of the probable. The sky is an easy boundless blue, the day warm and slow. The world teams with its flocks and swarms, a trillion appetites whetted and loosed. Light seethes, timeless and mostly true. Awash in the spectrum of the seen and unseen. Aglow in the aimless tailings of the day.
We erase our mistakes when we tell these stories, or repurpose the facts to fit the fables we endorse. It is always that best of all possible fib, that notion that even our wrongs are right. So we claim the virtue seat despite all our bile and venom. So we cling to a righteousness we can not know despite our vicious hearts. Invisible kings, and golden rules we would sooner break than follow. We color it all in greens and golds despite the darkness of our hearts.
I am only a series of dismal efforts and crass oaths. I am only the motion of the season and the sickness, the propriety of the probable. The sky is an easy boundless blue, the day warm and slow. The world teams with its flocks and swarms, a trillion appetites whetted and loosed. Light seethes, timeless and mostly true. Awash in the spectrum of the seen and unseen. Aglow in the aimless tailings of the day.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
keep
How long the trail of the day though the day is diminished, how bright that last stripe, that final spark. The world rolls over to warm its belly, the sky curls along the turn of its spine. Crows rise to fly to some distant roost, clouds scatter, aglow in the leaving light. The ordinary breeds with the ecstatic, and so we mark our passage. Day to day, month to month, year after shriveled year, we are marked and noted.
The limits of this dry skin arrive, prickly and abrupt. Hands abraded by rough sand and dry wind, fingers cut and stippled by needle and thorn, limbs burnt hot and tight by the summer sky. Arms hang loose, legs shift on their foundations. The flesh is buffeted by breeze and soil, weathered into the dead memory of these legions of lost days.
There is a dead man singing on the radio, wave after wave spreading his throat thin, rippling whispers across the stretch and loom of creation. There is a ghost afloat on the bandwidth of this mummified memory, a girl caught upon the cusp of a freshly changed mind. There are words stacked above this sentence, words descending down below. Eyes trawl over every exposed surface. Eyes sort every shine and spark. There are lies I long to tell you. There are promises freed that I can not help but keep.
The limits of this dry skin arrive, prickly and abrupt. Hands abraded by rough sand and dry wind, fingers cut and stippled by needle and thorn, limbs burnt hot and tight by the summer sky. Arms hang loose, legs shift on their foundations. The flesh is buffeted by breeze and soil, weathered into the dead memory of these legions of lost days.
There is a dead man singing on the radio, wave after wave spreading his throat thin, rippling whispers across the stretch and loom of creation. There is a ghost afloat on the bandwidth of this mummified memory, a girl caught upon the cusp of a freshly changed mind. There are words stacked above this sentence, words descending down below. Eyes trawl over every exposed surface. Eyes sort every shine and spark. There are lies I long to tell you. There are promises freed that I can not help but keep.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
on battleship hill
It fades like the dream of a great nation after daylight finds it, like proof the whole works were ground down. The new day finding the world full of steam and fan blades, dry towels and intimate tides. The moment drawn down to salt and gleam, all the participant stars absent or aloof. That rush of a wind plummeting to the earth, that notion of sky as a verb. All gone but that smile brushed soft against your lips. All gone but that glance of breath and light.
Where did the music bury its festooned dead? Where does the rhythm arrive when hidden with raw bones? Such a thirst as the soil drying in your throat. Such a thirst as rain returned to myth. Your flesh frank and drizzled with sweat. Your gaze that permafrost of every absolute. History and longing so achingly entwined.
This comes from the other side of understanding. That gulf bridged diminishing so slowly the lessons learned on that road. Skies wheel constellations and bird above our dull grasping. The earth throws stones beneath our sleeping feet. The voice of enduring longing inevitably the bitter dose swallowed. The cry in the night eventually only a haunting recalled. Love strives sleepless, clawing through the dark.
Where did the music bury its festooned dead? Where does the rhythm arrive when hidden with raw bones? Such a thirst as the soil drying in your throat. Such a thirst as rain returned to myth. Your flesh frank and drizzled with sweat. Your gaze that permafrost of every absolute. History and longing so achingly entwined.
This comes from the other side of understanding. That gulf bridged diminishing so slowly the lessons learned on that road. Skies wheel constellations and bird above our dull grasping. The earth throws stones beneath our sleeping feet. The voice of enduring longing inevitably the bitter dose swallowed. The cry in the night eventually only a haunting recalled. Love strives sleepless, clawing through the dark.
Friday, July 29, 2011
green reaches
It all comes down to that blunt conceit of perspective. I so like those stones passed forever by some river, shaped by only certainties, a fish always on the border of more water. I so lost in the confusion of story and history, lost in these songs muddled in between soul and bone. The words belonging always to that just so moment. The words always so entangled with the tongue.
She speaks to me despite the encumbered distance. She speaks to me despite the unlikeliness of all the savor in the phrase. It is only the romance of the sailor and the north star. It is only the distinction of the starlight and the sea. She is such the conspiracy of all that isn't, such the co-mingling of the wanton improbable and Christmas letter. She is the all the language I was born with-out.
I wrote all these letters so long ago, when time ran slow and love was still another country yet discovered. I wrote all the words when words still lingered near their fledge. Green reaches and familiar trees abound. Someone still lived nearer persuasion, someone still lived close to worlds of wonder. Someone lived loose enough to know it didn't have to end as a lie.
She speaks to me despite the encumbered distance. She speaks to me despite the unlikeliness of all the savor in the phrase. It is only the romance of the sailor and the north star. It is only the distinction of the starlight and the sea. She is such the conspiracy of all that isn't, such the co-mingling of the wanton improbable and Christmas letter. She is the all the language I was born with-out.
I wrote all these letters so long ago, when time ran slow and love was still another country yet discovered. I wrote all the words when words still lingered near their fledge. Green reaches and familiar trees abound. Someone still lived nearer persuasion, someone still lived close to worlds of wonder. Someone lived loose enough to know it didn't have to end as a lie.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
some farther star
Leave me first that kiss of fever. Leave me all this lamentable flesh. The burn of sun, the cool of night. These stretched pauses of harm and luck. The corridors of rushing blood, the catacombs of shifting silence, the step and the turn and the rigor of the coil. Bleed me to the bone, cook me down to ashes. This is all the heaven I can stand.
It is a sky that first speaks to flying. It is a sky that voices the soul of sunken stones. The afternoon beats down peals of leisurely heat, making mirages out of steel and asphalt. Summer speaking in the shadows clinging to the bellies of stalled traffic, a season revealed in sizzle and spark. Dusk longed for long before its hour of arrival. Dusk praised beyond all measure of its power.
Praise the day and savor the night. Sing your songs through ache and comfort. Sing your songs once all cause for singing is gone. The heart beats out its graceless rhythms. The heart keeps the time until all that time is done. All you want might yet find you. All you need may be lost beyond all but regret. Sickness leaves and sickness lingers. Your life on fire the feel of some farther star.
It is a sky that first speaks to flying. It is a sky that voices the soul of sunken stones. The afternoon beats down peals of leisurely heat, making mirages out of steel and asphalt. Summer speaking in the shadows clinging to the bellies of stalled traffic, a season revealed in sizzle and spark. Dusk longed for long before its hour of arrival. Dusk praised beyond all measure of its power.
Praise the day and savor the night. Sing your songs through ache and comfort. Sing your songs once all cause for singing is gone. The heart beats out its graceless rhythms. The heart keeps the time until all that time is done. All you want might yet find you. All you need may be lost beyond all but regret. Sickness leaves and sickness lingers. Your life on fire the feel of some farther star.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)