ecliptic

The moon didn't melt away. It didn't dissolve like resolution or fade like faith. The curtain was pulled and all that glow became muted, the moon submerged into obdurate shadow. I saw it cut an evil grin in west heaven, then it was a dull stone hung above the dim horizon. It waited there in stark relief as the darkness descended, daylight hinting away from the east. I watched it there as it surrendered to the hills and rooftop obstructions, dawn always somewhere in reserve.

I am faded and I am fallen. Weary and slow and dull, I know I should leave soon. Yet every time some bad hand reaches for my throat I am again that flurry of gleeful destruction and vicious rage, too weak to let some stranger decree me through. The light finds me less and less, the words all sorted into sortie and apologia, the devil's due and the levity in God's grand joke. I am all but gone, but I can not offer gracious surrender. I am mostly ache and tears, but the ache and tears will not remit. The fire is leaving but the embers still stir hot and bright.

It is essential to the integrity of the whole story that every piece does its part. It is crucial that the puzzle has its fits and starts. The mystery nuzzles up to some familiar cycle, leaves fall and the moon holds its breath, the earth casts its shadow from some other blazing day. I stare up at the sky through trees and over fences. I watch the stars and the moon while most folks are still asleep. The world turns, shifting its weight from hip to shoulder. The world turns, making the best with what is left. The day comes, and I melt away like some made-up moon. Always less, never letting go.

sausage

Save it for the golden measure, save it for the Holy Ghost. All these words that you embrace outside of meaning. All these threats of hell and heaven waiting down the road. All these fables of ache and fear, crystalized as breath cooling upon your pillow. I stand still for a moment, all the stars spilling across the skies. I stand still for a moment, taking in your gods by the eyeful. I would have moved soon after, but it turns out I was never there.

There is a poem of nerve and bone radiating with-in me. Waves of perspective hung out to dry, more meat for the smokehouse, more tome for the ghost. The words that rise and rot, the words that step and trip. The poem remains a facility of blood, the rocking horse tide, the frothing sentience of breath giving meaning to the tide. The poetry remains unwritten, scarcely remembered in the hunger and the fury. That abrupt interruption, the knock in the middle of the night that shoos the mind off course occurred before I was born. A life that feels like the missed starter's pistol, waiting for a beginning that ended long ago.

The season is the story of the world slowly dying. The season is the story of the world rocking itself to sleep. Us little pigs building our houses out of lies rather than straw, because we have learned that lies endure. Us little pigs stringing up our made up truths, that our freedoms come from killing strangers, that words from on high outrank the squealing of our hard little hearts. We use up all our fire wood building pyres to burn those big bad wolves, forgetting that winter is on its way.

cold comfort

The moon lays down an icy stare, glaring away at roof and tree. We can only blame ourselves. Abandoning our elder truths for bluff science and book sanctioned deities. Forgetting its name amid so much frenzied prayer. Forgetting just how far away far away can be.

The air rests in stolid umbrage, crisp on the tongue, freezing to the touch. There is ice in the sky, the dark continuity of the complicit reply. Sparkling inferno that gleam with the certainty of extinction, conflagrations so bright and distant they defy belief. The night bites at faces and fingers, spun upon the wheel of the world.

The sense of things burrows into the earth, slowing from one form to the next. Life hangs on despite the height or the hour. Wood smoke crowds the street and peeks in windows, touching everything with tiny filthy fingers, marking every flavor with its greedy tongue. Winter flings its favors and its curses without distinction. The gates are closed, the doors are locked. I settle in with all my misgivings, clinging to whatever comfort the cold allows.

unuttered

The moon swells against the fabric of the winter sky, a heavy stone hung among all the still smoke of chimney fires, a fable awaiting some once upon a time. The light slows, filling with the spare parts of the clockwork of time. Haze takes the streets as the sun gives up, shadows rolling down the middle of the road. An ambulance wails onto the block and stops in front of a house just across the way. Some stories know where they are going before the first word is sacrificed. Some stories don't take to telling at all.

Life is a busy place to live, all these scene changes, this obstreperous cast of characters entering and exiting, worse than any Russian novel. Names and faces scratching at the glass of remember, memory filling with slips and slivers, dogs and cats and friends nearly forgot. A box of photos sleeping high in some quiet closet. A song heard so long ago even thinking of it dopplers thoughts into oblivion. You weren't here for most of forever, then you were here, spinning wheels and spitting fire. When you go, all the streets roll up and the details settle, sediment gathering around the flavor of your unuttered name.

We climb that steep hill for the brief plummet back down. We wind the clocks and plant the flags and feast and starve and riot and shuffle. All the evidence never enough. We get cold so we swaddle and layer and huddle. We get cold so we gather and feed the flames. We strive and love and suffer and pass, ghosting into glory or dragging all those chains. One day the sun goes down, and we do not find another dawn. Sirens sound, an ambulance appears. Everyone asks even though they know already. Another story ends as the darkness settles, the lights so bright as the ambulance pulls away.

the fire

The shine had worn off of the dream of the world, all the heavy fruit rotting on the vine. The gleam of fresh skinned knees so quickly clotted to scabs. The grain aching away on every board and plank. The rusted chains dangling without a swing in sight. The skies turned the color of silty water. The horizon always burning down.

Cold coffee and all the lights are low. Dogs and cats and the television murmuring under its breath. Dust clambering along the book shelves, all these words awaiting claiming. Voices clinging to husks and embers. Stories lick the bones of meaning, smoldering just beneath each skin.

Is this the path, worn by hoof and heel? Is this the mark, scratched into the stones and earth? This flesh so weary, these bones so bright. This wood so dark, the stars so far. I follow the smoke. I follow the glow. The world awakens, and I still am searching for the fire.

xoxo

You wear all the right rituals, that perfect posture, those secret marks. The mask of passion, the face of faith. That reach towards always craving more. As if you were carved from all the lack and fervor shed from the exhausted efforts of my existence. As if you were always there, waiting in the wings of my idle heart.

There are less evident tricks that seem to endure. There are more artificial sources that run riot with these settled bets and shameless minds. The assertion of neutrality only another choosing of sides, either wearing the blinders of the brilliantly unaware or practicing some cheap deceit. Desire turns the best of us into deluded marks or entitled cons. Miserable excuses like my own run rampant where my stereotypical wishes are invoked. Only a fool believes he can not be fooled.

There is more of you of course than my amazement. There is more to you than the shore and the sign of my oblique mind. You are that light, and the witness to all that shine. You are the world, and all the bounty of shock and wonder so implied. I would kiss you, as if I could carry such promise. I would kiss you, as if I could ever be so right.

that final light

If you must remember me, remember me at my worst. Somehow it gained the virtue of certitude, when so much failing came as lack of faith. Somehow it collaborated with your kindness, this weight of wreck and ruin. The wasted days, the broken trust, the long palaver down the road to hell. I would hope that these would mingle with the flavor of my name. I would hope at least some lesson would remain.

The day grinds down to dirt and feathers. The cat on the rooftop, the dogs at my feet. The sky slows, and the warm breath of the distant Pacific lingers on the street and in my beard. Questions burn away, casting out silty ghosts of smoke that Coriolis away to heaven. Questions burn, and all the asking ends up prayer.

It isn't that my sins are greater. It isn't that I long for the lash. The days dissolve, all tooth and shadow. Good things are destroyed for the sake of lies and foolishness. Lives are sacrificed to line greedy purses, and the words are bent until all meaning breaks. The memory of love with eyes wide open. Amid so much crawling darkness, choosing that final light.