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The world is shaped from the inside out, but still you shouldn't close your eyes too long. You pitch and spout, seething fervor into every flesh. You twist and shout, gravity always having its say. The sky is gray silk and sunken light. It hasn't always been so pretty, painted like a picture, lingering like a kiss. It hasn't always held your crown so close in sharp detail. The day alight the moment you open your eyes. The world awash in your life.

The cock crows some encumbered number. Hinting at spells only fairy tales know. Those pinches of salt or avoided ladders. Evidence of direction given with every hesitation. The global position another given name. The clock slows down, the words all stagger. The moment slips from spokes to bones, from incidental wit to naked appetite. Traffic and animals make bells of bare air. Fog sticks to each raw syllable. Something missing from everything you say.

Just like that the magic happens. A thought unfolds and you are mingled with each map. Sense and invention, the rumble and the roar. The thankless tasks feel like forgiveness, the weary burden the press of the destined.  You covet the cough and sputter, the mutterings of breath and blood. Your tomorrows seem to come unbidden, like love comes along if the movies are right. This trembling rush becomes existence. The fierce and the fleeting, this deep sigh of the vast romance. These leaps and freedoms all spider and fly. The meat that is the meaning.

glorify

It takes time sometimes to get to the end. Tell it enough and it will turn into a story. Tell it enough and the tongue will measure out a tale. True love or second guess, saved day or made mess. We are generous with our follies, while we ration every grace. Life has no shape, it holds direction. Life is always about what gets us by. The whole wide world, straight up to the sky to claim, and every time you take a name. The big picture from the very first play, and all you see is the mirror.

The moon is up there, if anybody's asking. The moon is up there way ahead of the spectacle. Just a tangle of trees, a stretch of power lines. The rooftops lit for a whisper by sun and moon. The rooftops the heavy minded silence that soon ascends. The twilight two parts dark to one part quiet. The dogs all over stirring up a ruckus. Voices rising in twos and tens. A lonesome repetition, a sounding in the dusk. All the lights just waiting to turn up.

You never knew the wrong road, never learned a lesson when ten more would do. More than half the falls you took you still mistake for flying. It would take more than words and maps to find you. Every touch you make leaves a mark. Every day begins with this ending. Every night starts to stall right when it starts to get good. Never worried whether pole star or satellite. Being lost mostly about a change in intention. Being you mostly about agreeing to be gone.

along for the ride

It is a little too late to watch the sunset, a bit too early to count the stars. I post up on the back porch, the twilight bleeding color away to shades of gray, the cement cold and unrelenting. A cup of coffee, a glass of water, the world as it turns taking me along for the ride. The words will wait I say out loud, as if there weren't enough to worry after. The words will wait I say, because it seems I am never ready. I miss the mark because it needs missing. The dark and the empty touching the edges and coloring outside the lines.

We may yearn, and we may reach, but we really only ever do closed sets. The scheme of things all remembered maps and bits of string, the wary witness and the weight of vision. Experience of this skin and bandwidth an unlucky  pin. The borders of our minds much more impassable in the breach of fiction, the brain telling its stories, swearing they're the gospel. Belief our only strength and our main undoing. The heart always some wild country, full of trees and secrets.

I wear my years like well-worn shadows, I while away each hour like a fool. I slow the moment with a swallow of coffee. I find my place at the steel rim of the cup. Outside the air carries some small commotions. A yapping dog, a clinking fence. The sky painted in dim stars and dark needles. The trees spread to touch an absent sun begin to breathe in reverse. The earth spins, dragging my whole world with its whim. The words course on, weathering through each root and vein. The words return me to my place, along the long and narrow. They take the meaning from me, and take me along as well. The world vast and empty, save for a breath or two.

isolate

They say it is your nature, they say it is all in the cards. Your play built into bone and sinew, the tussle and take of the animal you are wed to this unseasonable warmth. The sad facts draped across this frame, indolence and ignorance signing a treaty of mutual defense and growing a sample for distribution. You close your eyes and feel the sunlight brush your skin. That touch sparked deep with-in this tumble of blood and breath, the story spoken and the cherished faith. That warmth the only divine favor you can confess.

Then the rest all comes out, the reckoning of constellations built upon myths you do not know. Star after star named after forever, time after time the clockwork unwinds. The weight of the words you will not speak all lead and fire burning beneath your heart. The lilt of unfamiliar instruments tuned to some alien scale, music once so certain tatters the fabric of the song. The wheel turns and the road whistles and you travel all the places you marked on the map. The story goes, and you are still and silent. This is where you wound up, in god's plan or where you were placed by fate. Tell it until your face turns blue, this is where you are.

The sun burns low, the hour lingers. A cool breeze spills across your skin. Dogs bark, children shout, birds keep themselves busy between earth and sky. The world does its business while we play at make believe. The world doesn't need you, but it will miss you when you are gone. You make your case to the starlings on the  power lines. You make your case to the crows in the air. The words fall down on the muddy earth. The words lose purchase mingling only with the sun and sky. You speak the names they taught you, you work the spells and precautions they way they do in your tongue. The firmament only allows for so much change. You speak aloud, admit this sickness. It is heaven to endure this tired decline. It is heaven that longs to isolate.

find you

So you say the story's over. So you say you up and quit.  You only mean it by the mouthful, those breathless moments there and gone. The crunch of arrival calls from  the gravel drive, moonlight and mosquito bites, dogs barking out the hours gone. The motion lights come to blind and buzz you. The engine cools as the electric hiss cicadas away. You know well enough any promise can be broken. You know it doesn't matter whether you wait to make your bed.

I clear my throat and sip my coffee. I counts the cracks and sing to the rain. Lost for hours to smoke and shadows, waiting for the dusk to come. Trading faith for anticipation of another waking. Trading answers for the wearisome world of ever-asking, unknown soldiers and unmarked graves. Breathing the air and minding the tide. A plane up high almost sounds like thunder, the romance of the rain on the wing. A car menaces the distance, the tools at hand only every will there is. The magic of tomorrow the only spell that cares.

Call me what you want to, I'm up most hours. There's usually an excuse to be found. A coincidence of weather and location. The clouds crowd in, so you might as well stay. I can't tell what will matter, or what will mean. Come along in your cloak of nightfall, come along trailing braids of rain. Unravel the shadow that tries to confound. Water spills down from the eaves, and I am watching every way in. Just because I never see you doesn't mean that you're not there. I find you on the curb when the storm falls down. Just because I am wide awake, doesn't mean this is not the dream.

infatuate

This is the root of history, the clinging breath of the senses. So close you can almost taste it, so very near to this beating heart. Forget the spell of distance. Forget the words that worked our world this way. This is where you step a little closer. This is where you reach the limit. All the words there to say and savor. Your desire at last in your native tongue.

Speak aloud and forgive the witness. Speak aloud and shake the reign of time. The willingness of each mirror to be a window, your eyes suddenly some other beast. The wish to find out who is the fairest, another revel of entangled whim and need. The slick repair into another brief departure, the flight that joins the heart and mind. Subjugate that greedy inquiry, the wonder giving way to the way. Hard as stone or soft as water. The confession remits only the need to shame.

It is always the moment of your arrival. Clad in light and draped in shadow. The mystery alone left to tend to its business. The mystery only the closing of doors. The work of words all saving and shedding. The weight of flesh against the winter. Winding roads and beating hearts. The scales turn, and teeth bare. The spell cast in rib and rhyme. It can only answer as you ask this question, want and wander and this vast penitence. Say the words and meet your maker. Earn your skin and speak your mind.

ghost story

There is no reason to lock the doors. There is no cause to close the blinds. All eyes are shut in the end. The walls breathe deeply as the rain comes down. Every room left to its rattles and its songs. The water gossips against the windows, the drains tumble to their depths. Alone seems a letter that arrives already open. Alone seems like a sentence spoken too soon.

Dead wood holds the hallways closed, dead eyes gaze from the pictures on the walls. Once was one, and now is nothing. Once was here, and now is gone. Boxes buried in the backs of closets. Shelves heavy with books left unread. A house holds down the gravity of the matter. A home lives only in the heart and mind. The mildewed tiles, the damage done by tooth and claw. Such an awful silence, so much worse for the sound as it speaks.

Something stirs within the darkness. A chill clings to the naked air. Floorboards creak down a dim-lit hallway. Footsteps echo in an empty room. Shed the flesh and wake forever, pace these rooms until no legs will help. Step by step all sense is abandoned, walking through this world alone. This dull fear the first glint of awareness, the story told only breath let go. This life spent looking in every wrong direction. This vacant shell empty even of ghosts.