the ribbon and the road

The words wait, whether hue or tongue. The words swarm in, condense upon the objects, split up every sense. They fill in and gloss over. Each of them sad cavalcade and secret survivor. A sheepskin and a begging bowl. A ribbon and a road. A bin big enough for every secret. A djinn bound to be bidden.

It’s all been said, and it can never be said enough. The saying makes or breaks us, the way we whet our breath. The stars that have lit the first hard syllables still fixed in the transom of telling, long lonesome roads into reflection. The lies of the ancients that have lasted this long, to shape your mouth and set your heart to stumble and sprint. These stolen kisses and forbidden morsels. These mouthings and moans.

I speak them all, and think some more, and add your name to them. The long promenade, the omniscient gaze, the store of spells and enticements. This is where the long walk leaves me, limping through the wilderness, palming all that blooms and beckons. The weight of the play upon the players, but the words flying free. All these prayers and songs and poems trailing from root to roost. All the ways of saying so I can say your name and miss you.

meaningful attachments

They don’t think of you when the world grows quiet. They don’t remember you in their self conscious prayers. All the mementos left have been bagged, boxed, and added to the trash heap. The photos have been torn, burned, or deleted. History hasn’t registered you yet. The controversial monuments to your memory still unplanned, remain untoppled. Tomorrow is dust begotten.

You can’t trust the waveform you fit not to collapse. There is no urgency within to override. What you are certain is certain, all the rest of this guess work. There’s no marker for that mess. There’s no do over for that magnitude of meshugas. It’s not you, it’s the observable universe. Only the stories carry over.

Leave it for the ever after. Save it for the epilogue. Cold corners and lonesome outposts. A losing race to the more relentless of pursuits. Frame it with your culture heroes. This last prophecy, this time served. I saw it coming, but I believed it least.

ritual

Whatever way you fold the pillow, however you may pay the night, the clockwork keeps its count. The moon comes along spilling over, busying the shadows, ruffling the periphery. You are the cogwheel of this enchantment, you are the teeth of the tide. Words to pin back the wings of wonder. The instrument that lets the magic loose. You work the circle, you take your turn. The craft plus time served.

The moon makes with the glory. The moon heaps on the grace. The moon tells a story only you can know. You do the work, you count your blessed steps, you seal the deal by breath and blood. Each day a grinding away. The night filled by the sky.

The tense flesh, the rapt abandon. The step by step you set to. The rote descent of syllables, the spiral downward due with every step. There where you said you would be, waiting for the word.

places

Somewhere on the other side of the words, somewhere waiting behind the blanks, we are placed. This flesh, these wishes come unbidden, the magic that always wants us on our knees. Our role in the caper, the lines that are ours to drop, the world as viewed from the wings. The stage awaits, bright and unattended. The stage awaits, loosed by the cue. The world as turned and worn.

The stars strike their dwindling light, washed out by the looming of the moon. I’m locked in a room without windows. Boxed in by the insistent walls. Dusty light and crowds of shadow. A dirty mirror for company. All your lovers long since gone. All these years and still not off book. All these years and no lines to speak of to learn.

The mask is there to hold it all together. The mask is their to keep it going. The place held, the part taken. The words we are  wearing out. These lyric phrasings only go so far. We say our parts and find our marks. Our places only the start of the problem.

touchscreen

All the hours pass, a blur and a drag. The eyes spent on screens, thumb smudged and unproofed. This gaze unto, this longing on. These whispered anthems to bridled senses. The shine of particular skins. Fingers losing their facility to feel. Numb from following only want.

The loss sets in as the days slip past. All our slaughtered darlings, the markers orphaned of the map. It grieves us to learn and lose, love sticking to the edges of the passage into translation. It grieves us to be so small that our whole world can be swept away by the least breeze. Everything gone without a word.

All these buttoned-down fingers. All these remainders we rechristen in our image. The stories to warm us as we worm our way through the flesh of the world. To grace creation with our insistence, to place each flower in its tell-tale just so. What we say what we see, until we think of what we’d rather be. 

the crack in the ceiling

You make do with the ghost you’re given, the crack in the ceiling, the face on the moon. The story only grows as tall as it’s told. The weight you’re owed and the water you carry. The reel around the circle, the stars across the sky. You see something. You say something. The tide of night comes crashing down.

You wake up wet with dreaming. You wake up with the touch in tow. Glorious lights and pressing shadows, the ecstatic charge of flight still skipping through your blood. You breathe slow, these dreams still crisp and vivid. Your breath slows, this night still far from done.

I think of you through the drifts and the dreaming. I think of you while the myths march on. The cusp of the calling. The architecture of the lexicon. The star I fix with all my wishing. The stare unto certainty.The names we fix to clouds.

the distance people

We are born to words and signs. We watch out the windows, we wait by the phone. Sitting so still, the sky sweeps past us. Smears of stars and clouds. The blue hued harrow of every breath. The tightness unspoken in the chest, a burst of color always almost there. These hard turns and crabbed hands, letters moldering away. Alone, alone, alone.

Lock me up with ink and flowers. Send me to the remaindered places, the ones you’ve left for good. The stories that we tell ourselves to hold the days together. The stories we remember as we stare into the sky. The stars striking and the wheel a spin. The paths of the ancients and the parable calendar. The clock on the wall and the picture in a frame.

I would have words, but you’re always sleeping. I would have hope, but I never remember my dreams. I have grown old staring at screens. I have grown old watching the fall of years. Some strange case, some odd leanings. A heart choking lonesome and the scrolling of smoke. Tripping on my injuries and mumbling verse and curses. Stones in my pockets and the search for a cause. The light that finds me too bright and tactless, I turn into the myth of night.