smudge

 The stone in the shoe is a fork in the road. The flipped coin and the idle gamble. The call is the cause, the shed stone the next wave, the dominos there to fall. The world won’t give it a rest. Suspicions are that the fix is in.

So you do what you can to gaffe the deck. Attach what gods and ghosts you can to the project, sign your name on the line. Praise the lord and pass the ammo. Make a mantra out of here’s looking at yous and atta boys, hitch a ride on the way it’s gonna until you clear the field. Don’t kid yourself, kid— it’s still a long walk in the dark alone. You may as well pocket the tithe, you’re going to need every last cent.

So say your prayers and rest your cases. Burn the sage and make your peace. Live by wits and wisdom, in turn both trick and treat. Watch your step and count your stars. The fix is in how you learn to fit. Once all the faiths have made their declarations, and all the words runout. The world still turns,  out along the sprawl of the reeling Milky Way. Each step becomes another. The end will come around again.

the welcome

The empty spreads from room to room, it lingers whether I stay, like the shadows rushing in after the light’s switched off. It billows from my belly, anchored to ache and bone. This contraction amid all this primordial expansion, the self read in the rust on the couplings and the cup’s lingering residues. A reflection in the appliances, a trail of blazing  revelations. Alone in a series of small rooms. Obligatory occurrence and the unremitting signal. The church of unperturbed dust. A faith of constant fall.

More and more I am amiss in the coordinates, going from fuse to fuse, like reading a book by matches. A flash, a caption, the slither of heat singeing your fingertips. The story that we knit while we reside between our wits, how quick we read the field. I only see the flash and the fire. The. The darkness as the image persists. The uneasy feeling I should say something in some replayed conversation. Some road apart, before I knew for sure.

I know I wear my welcomes hard, I know I’ll do my best to drop the ball. The rest is a mystery with only proclamation and recanting assured. It’s a bruise and blur. I follow the rails, blind to boot and sky. The end is always a little further ahead, tripping over abandoned crosses, stepping on forgotten gods. The forest grows darke, and the path descends.

all the memories

There’s no point to any of this— the word after fucking word, the day after fucking day. I don’t have reasons, I have antecedents. I don’t have plans, I have habits. I’ve been on the bench so long, I might as well be dropped from the roster. That I waste the space to elaborate my disgrace, this empty ever after. That I haven’t fled the map altogether my continued shame. The melted wax of happenstance consumes the altar altogether.

Only the relentlessness of the light that’s always on. The drone of the fan and the face in the dirty mirror. The tentative joints and stiffened ligaments, the testimony of ancient blows, and the failings of the frame. Getting back up breaks even, at best. Thorny composers ringing the same old rosies. Each day a little more blood per bloom.

This should be the end of it. The dreadful dredge at long last done, the record set. All these days that never should have happened all the memories left. But nothing is as it should be as we all are what we are. Garbage day is every day there is.

urgent emergent

The drag of every day, a kind of grinding on and on. This witness as dismissive as it is wearying, the duty of this late last shift. On through the vague tenure of decay, the short sharp breath, the testimony of the lost step. On through this soft oblivion, the wild gyrations of the old faith growing slow. This last kiss falling away in leaps and days.

I follow the call of the urges, then the least resistant sort of way. Some vagabond faith based on oaths and observed stations. Some old standard and stubborn juke box truth. I stagger on step by step, the turn of word, the telling of the time. Even the empty is something said.

The loss of company and the slow burn of held wishes. The ache of the flesh measured in lack and want. The long fade looking you in the eye as the seasons say their goodbyes. The night drawn tight around the carcass, your touch still lingering long past gone. Close whispers and held breaths, a passion read like poems. This only if only, the light unspoken, the home unknown.

fallen alms

The words stir the skin, the bitter bite, the honeyed lips. Love letters and tender litany, the stormy romance rolls on by. Some fresh press of acrimony, some lustful tussle with your dreams. No next act, no further purchase. Hard stops and clipped diction. The substitutions that will soon replace me. Oblivion only an edit away.

My name has worn out, it grows stranger by the day. One day the words turn a corner. One day there’s a breath you can’t catch. The little nest of wishes that I carry empty, bare but for the thorns. A spray of stenciled stars, and a mind like a dying climate. Huddled in these bones and consequences, the grade climbs on and on. The prayer unfurls in smoke and ash.

I tire of the haberdasher and the architect. The smoke and the signal, the unburdening of the bones. The moon in my memory, the words on your lips. This place that resonates. This wished for world.

this ache

The light is always leaving, but it’s me that does the losing. The golden west of sunsets and recused loves, filling the frame with shade and silhouettes. Ruthless tomorrows and the drag along past, this moment of lore and smoke, a heart drawn around a name. The circle set and blessed, the unknown fear now the known pain. Every day a new incline, each day a climb. This ache of breath and bone. The weight of the name the one thing only you know.

Moth lit porch and the mouthful moon. The shattered firmament a dull dozing gray shimmering with the light that gets loose. The way the frame fits when you aim your intent. The way the night goes, a few useless moments at a time. Life the press of breath against my backbone, the hitch in my shoulder a mark through my purpose. The backlit empty, the depth of my obstruction. This bright sediment, the instrument untuned, a useless choreography.

I sit out here because the indoors are broken. The rooms are hard in their grubby geometries. The unsaid phrases and the letters left unsent. Slowly smoke curls towards the tin roof. The soft biopic of pop music shuffling through the fading frame. Hands lost deep in the reaching, an ache forever unresolved. A kiss went missing, and the whole world followed. A few pictures bereft of anecdote.

holiday

Headlights flash past, dragging shadows, pushing light. Dead leaf crunch and ritual invocations, a drift of spirits laughing in the dark. The night looms and the story changes to the tune of clock and street. The night ends, a slow burn of urgent sugar and the smoke of your lips. The holiday as good as over.  The night comes on and on.

I am loose in my observations. I am conversant in the stations of the chains. The words I spill in ritual, the vacancy I acclaim. The hallowed stretch of this numbed tongue. The empty acts of heavy handed grace. Another past unmasked, the hard stop of letting go. Want and words, trick or treat. Watching as the magic passes me by.

Dark doors and candy wrappers. Car alarms and the rumble of some scrapers rattling bass. Ghosts having to wait their turn. This is the last minute, each minute up until. Everybody’s got to go.