borrowed

Breath by breath we scrub the sky, the wind in tiny fragments, the machine of too many pieces to count. We stroke the strings until it is music, we wear the season  until we see the bones. The way each object rolls slowly through your fingers. The way each instance slips through your hands. We are open to the atmosphere, draw and spill, scrimp and save. We are caught in the speed of the shutter, painted by this deluge of light. Pictures on the mantle, moths to the flame. We cut ahead  in the line, always holding a place open. We are incessant invitations, virus and bacter, angels and bad actors. We fill and empty, pinpoints upon the flow.

You stare at the dashboard as the engine idles. Head lights pooled upon the garage door, the driveway marked by warm tires and stray paper. You ask yourself these midnight questions catching your eye in the rearview mirror. Is this me? Is this it? Is this the map or the wake of days? You talk to all the ones that are never there. The voice of your heart the tinny euphemisms of storybooks and old movies. The story of your life a movie you make up as you go. The seedy theatrics as your flesh impels you. The embarrassed revelation of who you are as you shut off the engine and go inside.

It is the breathless edge of this brittle thinking. Check the book and bang the gavel. Repeat it until you call it law. Stray from your notes all you like. We spill and gather, following smoke and circling the drain. God closing doors and each exit being an entrance. We pass the word in whispers, hold it close and tight. We thread the world in our sacred habits, pull the cork and take a swallow. We grow upon our heaps and mendicant dreams. Seeds and fruit, work and fallow. We spin and reel, taking our joy from the next one over. The bountiful harvest, and each hunger it ensures.

the wanderers

What seam is stitched with your ragged pattern? What sky will fall from this disrepair? The morning comes along, scrubbed and combed and pinned with those certain stars.  The coded moment when the myth meets your eye. Staring from that expanse of oblivion, what wouldn't make a light? Starting the whole thing from scratch, who knows what sparks you might shed?

Venus lingers on the cusp of dawn. That blazing chariot about to reach the rise. The stick work trees hold heaven in its place, as the world stirs its particulars.  The shadows sink below the skin, the day another etiquette to remember, the night another puzzle to misplace. Direction cued by compass and by banging cans,  the streets set upon by garbage trucks. I clear my throat to speak my peace. Worlds just tumble away.

Come the morning sanctimony, come the bedtime prayers. This ritual of remote witness and fever swallowed, this evidence of salt and heat. Stretched sheets and tangled clothes, all the sins washed away however deep they were hidden. The crown of blue and birdsong, the cloak of drum and siren.  Stones in your shoes and crow on your tongue. The stars are stricken from the sky, no marks of their remittal or erasure. Just another wanderer trading fairy stories. Just another traveler worrying the path. These misshaped questions, these unleashed dreams.

instrument

The songs carry, the lights go out, the hour comes and lingers. I open my eyes and cast my shadows on the inside. Geese call out from up above, dogs bark from every other yard. Mosquitoes hang in the air, guided by the rebounding shine. Eyes glow so very slightly, hit by that contagious burn of vision. The stars are dim, but getting brighter. It sounds as though the geese are gone.

Sundown by every instrument, tiny wings and blood-tinged  kisses. The tone changes depending on the flesh. Wear every smoke, skin every song. Watch the night fall until  the stars follow. I cull each instinct from the air, your flicker and your feel. The atmosphere repurposed, to every fuel a fire. This dense reflection, this series of frequent shines. Speaking deeply to the skin of the mirror, as scary as any fairy story. The obvious endings of the well worn tale, the reckoning always in the telling.

Sight blurs and words slur, some other slipped up time. The hours never start or end on time. The sigh of traffic passing, lights sliding along each skin. Pause beside the porch, moths beating at the bulb. A chill arises just to remind the flesh. The touch of distance to sting the fingers. That rush of breath to pass as prayer. Something there amid this absence. Something that the picture will not tell.

the way things play

I say your name until you're steam, breath on the metal, dew on the bloom. The flowers haven't started their story, and already it is fall. That dream of clotted dawn, stray stars and dishwater clouds. That active transformation when the day changes worlds, the shimmer of wings and the itch of punctured veins. The trail of shoes that leads through the seasons. The crisp press of solid steps, the rustle of bone and leaf. I speak aloud to make my reason. I shed my empty into the cold still night.

It is a sentimental structure, fingers wag and wrists stiffen, that window the soul lets weep. Bible flowers and bee's comb, the old antenna listening for god as it bends beneath the weight of idle birds. Heaven bends beneath those same wings, the work of angels mostly pollination and damage control. These words stray, soaring high, heading home. The words roost along your bright song and sharp bones. To say that no-one knows you is not the same as to be unknown. To be born lonely is not the same as to be alone. I speak to your frequency, I tune the rest of the world away. By faith alone that last prescription. The rest of the mess just follows suit.

Can you find me when the skies say smooth sailing? Can you hear me once the bad weather breaks? The rain beading on the window, the trees scraping on the roof. Your flesh swift and bundled, your lungs full of scrapes and scratches. I feel the rough brick and the dull ache, the will of the fern, the resiliency of dust. The nail tacked into the plaster, the crooked picture never what it seems. The mystery revealed, and so the machine takes over. The gear-work winds down, your heart racing, chasing my pressing voice. You reach and stretch, some venture of limb and ligature. You stop and listen, I spill your secrets. You hear me speaking, the room a shock of silence. There are no accidents, just unfamiliar mistakes. There is no magic, just the strangeness of the way things play.

spin

We can do this by the book. You can wear your ring, you can ring your bell. That golden note held too dearly. That golden rule wrote too broad. Dismiss the mirror by the way it marks. Dismiss the spell by the weight of your failings. We can read the rules in the shameful remission of ourselves. We can read by the shine of these most recent shells. Never quite read the way it was written. Never a rule until the hammer comes down.

Then more things, though I forget the order. The names and markers and storefronts all change. Every stolen glance, every nested oath. Your word so much that you say too little. These claims you make that your will is not your own. Tension holds at every surface. The sun slings color through the dawn. Feet grow uncertain, learning which ground to stand. The steps seem so many, and the light will diminish in the depths. Your clothes piled off in a corner. Your gaze raw and vivid, your flesh set to smolder. The reflections tend to dim the reasons. More forest, fewer trees.

We were closer once before. The rainy nights and the opened door. Sitting talking on the floor, the clock was so thick and useless. We'd tell our stories straight to dawn, our dreams so bright and painted on. The crow flies stark, the sparrow sings. I talked of winter and of wings. You leaned against the doorway, waiting for the walk to wear off. The rain came down, and you waited without a word. I reach through years and seasons. I touch your warmth in your scattered words, those moments missed, and luck sent. Those chaste regrets and kindled wishes. The day falls down, you build a kind of fire. Not to heat these long cold passages, but to light the looking back. Broken up and written down. Scripture always stricture in the end.

past perfect

What of the dust once the mud has swallowed the earth? What of the dusk when the day has burned so bright and slow? The sound of sirens ring the streets, the wild yearning and the empty threat. The pleas of these fresh emergencies, open wounds and the tang of dying blood. Dried black on the pavement, the crimes called out from the contentious pooling, every swarm and mob bear the dense alarm. The dogs dig for treasure, the flies gather, thinking only of posterity. Injury only another name for opportunity. Illness another paving stone on that march of progress.

One day we open up and have become our elders, words sounding so strange and yet so much the same. Lessons spilled into the boil in our blood, the work only remembered for the burn. Muscle memory and the rough and tumble of those ancient curses. The poison always mingling on the sweet side, the bitter best left sifting through every breath. Always future tense and past perfect, the things that once were until they end, the things that will always come one day. The charm of your reflection always in the reversal of events. You never seem to see yourself until you are inside out. You never seem to know until even the wreck is in ruins.

What is left contends with appetites and inclinations, the drift of intuition and the leaning of the map. The world so drastic and unchecked, it only arrives full scale. We guess and bet, declare stout allegiance. We bleat and rut, always returning to earth before it is over. Sold again and again, purity and privation, or blood and indulgence. Written down in nesting cups, folded with-in some suspect skin, the story sneaks right by. I knew it until I had found out for sure, there was no longer certainty. The words spoken to forget, the dogs pause to sniff the air. You whisper but forget to listen. Then ambulances everywhere.

out of sight

For days without end I washed the smoke from the bowl, the color of the sky trailing the color of the wind. The weather came and went like fortune's cat, quiet as a ghost, easy as the night. My hand crabbed along that aging paper, spider scrawl shuffling along the page. A spilled ritual of bone and toil, the stubborn ligaments and every twitch and tic. A promise so gracious and labored it seems it could only say something else. I whisper some dank periphery, some dash of secret toward this dearth of interest. The ragged graveyard of things unsaid, your skin touched by this gleeful breeze.

A long slow afternoon, and every one comes calling. Every stranger has stories to share, once they see see how much you're missing. Every shadow knows its ease comes spilling from the light. The sunlight left falls from the leaves in the trees. The day lingers off in a corner, the weight of heaven always felt in lash and absence. The unseen stars map out blind constellations. You stare out the window, blinded by the horizon. You close your eyes against this choice morsel. Warmed by the passage of sun down all these steps. Other stairs fall somewhere a little further out of sight.

Your name has changed the nature of my tongue, so burnt bitter, so chocolate dark. It weighs its absence along each spring and gear, the machine adrift in the breathing and the blood. There is no resolving these stains, these teeth marks and swallowed feathers. There is no ablution for this theft and hunger. Spoken soft, as if a secret. Spoken slowly, like it was a spell. The magic in the stitch that mends the wounding. The saying that portion I never see, your empire awake already.