obvious stars

Grapes hang still from neglected vines, though the summer is ripe and the hour late. Birds busy themselves from sky to stem, clinging to the blue before appearing amid the green, slips and flickers that range from drab to gaudy. Words and written without care or caution, dull and treacherous upon the tongue. The flavor of dry, those mutterings of dust. The steady campaign of indistinction winnowing away at the senses getting lost.  A mark here, an absence there. The slow and leaden onslaught of the lonesome night.

It feels a little like the hour of your arrival, glowing in the twilight as though lit from within. The special sentience granted thought and flesh when doused in light, memory worn in the open as a second skin. That vast and liquid lingering of touch and want aligned. The warm reckless day both young and ancient, the eloquence of an infants gaze, hinting of further distance and lives lived out. That magic of meeting you casting whole threads of happenstance as precious evidence, the familiar stranger I will always know.

The skies empty out their aviaries. Bird descend to feed in flock and feather. I know them in color and in song, but most of their lives are a mystery. Why the abrupt finches here, and the haughty humming bird there? Which company will the stoic woodpecker keep? Their secrets kept better than the language of creation. All the smoke and mirrors, and still this lost cadence.  All the gathered certainties and still we serve a greater lapse.  Our heads are splitting, our hearts choke on shadows. We serve out each sentence beneath a gleaning of obvious stars. Clumsy and telegraphed, we mumble away our caution to the cavernous night.

now and then

Another swallow of coffee and the stage is set. Another cup emptied and the deal is done. The comfort of a hard floor, the labor of a shifting sky. The words always off doing something. The words always staying out all night. All the father's pacing, all the cups nesting in the cupboards. Kitchen lights and carnal knowledge, and everything changes save the places and the names. The years swell, the decades break, and you wake up on strange sands upon a familiar shore. The day ashine all a sudden, a stone polished beneath the clear and icy waters of a lingering spring. Here again, then gone awol with every sailor ashore.

The years have mostly gone bust, each one a little quicker, offering a little less. The sad stories settle into the cozy kitchenette, crowding all our plates and knees. We make some room with cups and elbows, sip and swallow as best we can. Hospital trips and lonesome hallways. Watching our feet as the elevator comes and goes. The precious moments all aglow with their vernal luster, our mouths learning to speak the tongue of dust and tomb. We prepare ourselves for the odd departure, counting out each empty bed.

The truth is not so much I keep my own counsel as I mostly talk to myself, alone save for the mercurial retinue of cat and dog scuffing up my wake. I mutter away beneath the roiling firmament and upon uncertain paths. Stars fall down and mountains crumble. Whole cities are swallowed by the sea, to dream forever the difference between the drowned and the damned. Stuck out of time, without so much as glasses or a watch, I mostly  must make due. Here today there is no tomorrow. Here today another treasure to bury without chart or map. Drink it down, hope for one more.

pompeii

Every moment is a mark missed, every moment a step mistook. The sun in my eyes, my feet stepping on shadows until nowhere is the only place to go. The flesh sings of the warmth and the wind, fueled by the shifting tide of breath and blood. It sticks around long enough to ignore all the signs and the warnings. When the end walks on in, it hardly merits credulity, the moment so persuasive that we forget it is the skin of change. The difference never noted, the ache and sigh of existence only here on a visa. The tole and clang of being just a dream of flying kept tight within a leaf lifted by the wind. The soul declaims its empire until the world exclaims its extinction.

How they love to insist we chase our dreams. How they love to proclaim lives lived in the moment. As if the magic of desire was enough of a reason. As if the answer of every prayer did not end the same. Weary bones and ashen faces, imagination our most powerful institution. Our mortal shrines lit with these dreams of forever, though the sad handful of years we have have mostly gotten the better of us. Our blessings spread like our promiscuous blood, the web of ancestry spun and spun. Names given and names taken, hunched shoulders and shadows squished. Rags and bottles and bones, sold for whispers and that lilting song “I wonder.”

Immortality takes forever to prove, but a moment to debunk. The earth rumbles, the sky shifts, the heavens ready their arsenal at random. Salvation a luxury leftover from survival. Respite only evidence that the bullet found another breast to pierce. Matter stalks its likes and druthers, waiting for a break in the explanation, waiting for a gap in the defense. Life and death only cause and effect, horse and cart. Without the one, there is no other. The train arrives at the terminal, every car empty and well lit. The station boils with all manner of intention, never slowing to answer. Moving like a statue made of closed eyes and wishes. Moving like a fire that reveals at once the location and duration of the soul.

postprandial

I draw the fire down until my fingertips are scorched, blowing the last of its smoke into the wake of the fitful winds, piddling away with the dust. Bad habits both wear and are worn, hanging out to dry with the rest of this mess. I cough and tamp down the last ember into ash. I cling to the essence of the air, still and dense and somehow always empty and always overfull. I am tatters and greasy rags, painted onto a screen of dust and gauzy sunlight. I am in a moment of an era of thirst and friction. Even my kisses are covered in dirt.

And so our days turn to deserts. And so our dreams flicker as the oases that spring from the mirage laden depths. Every breath a kindling spark, our hearts so full of straw and hope. Every word so thick and solemn it cannot help but seem a joke. Whole speeches set sail, so full of simple folk and bright untarnished tomorrows. Whole sagas sink out here, where the world and earth meet at the crossroads and rochambeau. One always turning, spun against the other. And so arrive our clear cruel nights.

The poems all spill, the stories ramble. The old ones always coming around again, full of bones and names and the flavor of stars and campfires. So many told and telling, is it a wonder to get stuck on just one? The birds in the air, the beasts of the fields, all our pitiable burdens. All our secrets tattooed on our tongues and fingers. All our slaughters lingering on our lips. The blood sings of brother and mother and sisters and brides. The earth cluttered with our burned down fathers and built up lies. One prayer no better than another, out here where no one listens. One feast ends to deny some further appetite. We turn one way or the other, the sky sputtering away in fits. One word the same as another when the wager won't change.

temporary

Transcendence is all about the wait, here in our choked-out summers and heartfelt bets. Given enough time and spite everything will change. We shrink and rot towards those golden autumns, wearing away in torn nails and frayed touch. The flocks unfold their eyes and wander, we spread out wide our dreams to fly. The hour bared never like shoulders but like teeth. The moment betrayed  before it has passed. You alone arrive unscathed.

There you are hiding among all those birds and flowers. There you go descending with the wind. Each breath drawn tight then abandoned. Each step like a warning of better things to come. You linger like rain along the ocean. You shine like the startled fall of sudden stars. That taste of salt. That sheen of sweat. All the lovely skulls so full of your eyes. All the lovely flesh so blessed by your bones.

Even this won't last forever. Even you will become another before the wheels wear down. I will slow to a leaky faucet tempo. I will pace an encumbrance of dust. The dreams go wild as the memories stretch and dim. All that is familiar pasted against the wide horizon. Crowds and strangers cluttering the flickering days. Still there is that bluff of sky, that reach of solemn pines. Your eyes lit with bright laughter somehow amid the blue above. Your laughter threaded through these slips and patches, your skin as warm and true as spring.

the ridge-line and the rail

Every new day, it is the same old thing with me. I ink my thoughts in ashes, I paint my mind lacquer black and set it out to dry.  Something fought or sang or drank in rounds. Something learned beneath the cover of night and tree. The limits of illumination, the monsters that await just out of sight. A quick relief of sadness and consternation. Every prayer choking on the dust and following the river. A way an intention worn out of doors. Each soul owing its substance to distant heaven. Each shadow pressed from some endurance of the sun.

Oh, and how the wheels spin. Oh, and how the flags unfurl. The wind revealing the only wisdom, change the very flesh of existence. The sun beats down on the back of my bald head. My eyes struggle with age and dust and light. The birds have all but plucked the vines clean of bitter green grapes. The dogs make further discoveries, digging at breach and root. I am silt in the stream. I am the broken string missing the true note. I carve my message into the blunt electric vacancies, I make my message from the charred interment of blood and bones. Every slaughter always something's feast. Every lapse the measure of some other.

I suffer from the usual suspect ideologies and the typical infernal weakness. Heaven and hell have already been allowed too great a say. Now high on the ridge-line of the next dark age, I hide what flames I render. A curl of smoke climbing up the tree limb, a tiny spark hidden behind my hand. I abide the habitual ideation, that flavor of gun metal measured with the sudden searing of my own flesh. That feeling like an echo of my long and dreary incarnation, the hollow place that can not be filled by god or love or labor, just the abrupt punctuation of a flash of powder and a slug of tungsten. The murder of all intention, that leaning over the flimsy railing. That insurmountable obstacle to all that I would or wish, these idle words laying graven upon all this bright and bounty. Every flight of fancy repurposed from this mouth full of mortal oaths and failing light.

it hasn't happenend yet

The sky tumbles and the dawn arises, band after band stitched with star and dark. The crosshairs of the dream give way to the camouflage of the day. The way all our eyes are tuned by wishes, watching for the one we want. The way every story starts out telling the sort of story it will be. A bramble of clouds, a babe in the briar, the long times, the far away galaxies. Branches bend and the storm gathers. A dove cries and cries. These are our sky scrapers. These are our stadium shows.

The barter is in tense and skins. The trade-off made of the by and by and the blessed be for the work of spine and the weight of spade. You would be the dawn, save for the hours. You would be the fire, except there’s all that smoke. Want and want, hunger and hunger, we write our names upon these skies and trees. The din of music, the crush of bandwidth. Barking dogs and flitting finches. Our faces only give away their secrets in the mirror. Our hearts only ever lit by the moon.

It is something like a song, save all the notes catch up before the song is over. It is something like a story, only we are the ones who always end up told. It is the plan we can feel only once we move away. Fingers stumbling over keys, fingers fumbling with zippers, buttons, and clasps. All this hurry must mean something. There must be a reason for all this shove and rush. The next and the next one after. Always that sense of staring off towards some distance. Always that sense of knocking the next hit right out of the park.