rainbows

They come at me to cut me down, painted wings and taped on crowns, cartoon hearts to conceal the funerary mood. Love letters sent for the paper cuts, the blood hunger never far from the fire, the always eyes watching from outside the glow. I cough rasps and flecks, not a clear breath in the bullpen, and the sipped auspices say nothing good. Dumb, dull death always cluttering up the wings. 

The room is lit with shrill ubiquity, the bare light and naked mirrors dash the shadows silly, soft shades and and uncertain shapes scattered all about. The fan overhead drones on and on, vision flickers and fades. Half a moon away from no moon at all, all guardians gone on, old brass blows an ancient blues, a kiss waking the new world from all its curses. The lonely day dashed into the howling mad night.

The stars pass by without my mark or measure. The days groan on without my help at all. I happen upon relics and artifacts, devil’s bargains and fiend’s curses sew tumors in my future flesh. I dissolve into embers, moments strung together smoke to smoke, lights left on though the room is empty save the light. Prism split along the this and that, word after word trying to at last elude the past tense. I watch the clock, waiting for last call.

smoking in bed

The trouble comes once the day is over. The blinds drawn down, the doors all locked. The animals indoors and the rain on the way. Stripped down and lullabied, I stare at the ceiling, smoke slowly filling the shade of the overhead light. The night finds me right where it left me, and it finds me wanting.

All these restless stirrings, this mirror of mind troubling on. The old aches and fresh affronts, the hungers and the heartbreaks, the alarmed sun and the wreck of the Hesperus. The stretch from gull to ghost, the star strewn stagger of the years, the devil’s due come scratching at the door. The path from mistaken to mistook. 

I am start of the story, I am the tip of the tongue. The tripping telling, the tired out trope. As the animal lusts and dulls, lungs clouded with the gathered grays and coming dones, the culture coils through each twitch and word. I reckon shore and sea and the sky becoming. From glutted dusk and gaunt dawn, these circles spun. I am the translation of blood to alibi, of dust to smoke. 

crowd stature

I guess I was listening to the Rolling Stones, though it’s more like that was the band that was playing. The song comes on, and the world trades in time and skins, all at once lost in a memory too vivid and close to be touched by word one. All the life spent since, a skip and a scratch. I guess we always are strangers longer, though it’s more that we never know. Your long shadow, my dissipation.

It’s in the blood, it’s in the numbers. It’s the misgivings of the moon and the vagaries of the weather. There when they all ascended, Gabriel’s horn and klaxon call. Hollowed out and heeling to, there where the day misplaced me. The last to know, the so and so.

There’s a rock by a trail head. There’s ravens in the sky. Wild Horses playing in my head. The blue on the bridge back home. There when the traffic slows up. The ache that took me there, the empty on the way. 

fealty

It’s another stretch of the blue and bitters, chewing hell and spitting pitch. The chores left hanging, the sun up and undone, the chill in the tall pale morning nibbling at any featured flesh. The dogs are lost in their devastations, the rats tucked in up under the eaves. The toothache beauties and the daily graces have all gone their way. It’s coffee after coffee, and not a clue in sight.

The day again falls off the map, the dragons rising up to meet the gathering clouds, dusk a brief and listless fling before night arrives in a mood. Trash cans clatter their way to the gutters, offerings to the next morning’s machines. The ashtray smolders, the coffee cup steams. Rain falls like a hush.

Offer up the thankful feelings, give yourself over to the snips and slivers. The briefest of respites, the most insistent of memories. I lean into the long ache, the cold dark calling of tomorrows running low. I feel the drag in my gait, the spectacle of the fool’s errand, the consequences nipping near. These gods that won’t have us. These arms that never hold. 

wishing

It’s the cards stuck in the spokes, these dead end grays, these almost blues. Breaking moons and straying stars, the weighing of suits, the harrying of the deck. Put in a word for prophecy, waste your breath in prayer. You can’t help but take a peek, giddy for a glimpse. You can’t help but make a wish, seeing that set to star. 

It’s not as if it wasn’t kindness. It’s not as if it wasn’t love. A picture taken in an awkward garden. A painting striped with drying tears. All the steps out of line were mine. 

We never know how long we have. We never know how fast we’ll fade. Here I was grasping at straws when I should have been digging graves. All the dead we carry, all the dying that we are. All the wishes for this life that never was, the dreams aimed for before the mark was missed. We can see how we diminish, shrinking from the witness of the world. How long we flicker until only memory remains. How a home is slowly overgrown, then empties out entirely.

world of wonder

The night comes hard softly, the weight upon you all at once, a limit learned by doing. All the moments left unstolen, all mistaken appraisals and summary judgments, the key broken off within the lock while the mechanism stammers and sighs. The somebody you wanted to be no one you’ll ever know. The ledger the red of debt, each breath the red of blood. You fell off the ride so hard so long ago, there’s not so much as a thought of getting back on. The horse made its choice, and there’s a whole world of falling yet to beat back the flesh from your bones. Debt, pain, and squalor your steadfast retinue, the night bumps the hardest once you’re down.

Time moves quickly among the orbits and contraptions, slipping around the rotations, counting on the eyes being fixed on the clock and the minarets. It walks with your ghosts, seeps in your bones with the cold, hides behind the mirror and inside your eyes. It plays with the numbers and delivers the medicine you don’t want to take. It takes everything, but it takes it from everything to keep it honest. It is the fire to your fuse, the boiling pot to your frog. It runs you down to rims, then it leaves you there. The road goes on without you.

Now it’s the long toothed hour, dead nerves and bad joints. The growing list of afflictions, the empty roster of kith and kindreds. The wishes still exist, but mostly as the curling smoke of snuffed candles, the stars so impossibly far that their burning might be over, the lover who never loved you, and never will. The bad art and self important raging. The cold hands of the earth, the deaf ears of the world. Before the meal is over, we will all be meat. The world of wonder devours as it shines. 

agency

The eyes feast

open before the leavings of

the light, the sensing 

ever bearing the brand,

the here I am

staring into the world

while the mind makes

mischief of the map.

The magic of the focus,

the framing and the lens.

So the sky goes, so

the flesh seethes,

this road from face to

ache, from the fence

line to the far horizon. 

Wishes and antecedents, 

the twilight the escape of

your warm name from

out my mouth. 

The wind always swooping in.

I anticipate your unfurling, 

the bent of bone

as if a wing embracing 

flight, all the tethers of

tongue and troth. 

Eyes open upon 

your skin and shine

the draw of want pressed

against the story

left beneath this kiss.