portmanteau

I don’t know what name to call you: I’ve used up quite a few. I don’t know which words I used that decided you your that’s that. The once in a while strays for a stretch, and it’s strangers by default. I reach and I pause, the words wait, tongue tipped. I breathe in until something breaks, then I breathe out again. I say the name that I new first, the oldest memories dug in deep. A sped pulse, the pull of bone and root. The silent hymns of stone.

A crossed bridge, a burnt offering. The softest and most stern. This claim of light and heat. Met upon the this or that, some clearing at crossroads. Old claims of bruise and blame laid bare upon the altar. The curtain only sudden from one side. 

There’s no word enough to touch you. There’s no word enough to revelate your grace. You radiate in the evermore, kin to moon and star. Your formidable devotion, your unyielding love. You pace blameless save for blessings in my dreams, the firmament still ablaze with your distant flame. You linger in the daily bread and I finally gave up the goat, There was a table set for never, a scraping of the barrel, where love spends just like time. 

once the dreams are it

Let it go, leave it lie, the blessings may yet come around again. You light a candle, whisper a wish, think “how soft” as the smoke curls silk and shadow. Somehow the falling is still hard. The porch light’s on in case someone is looking or lost, the music is low, the night yet undecided. Only this much, taking it breath to breath. Always so much missed.

The snoring dog, the dusty glow, the way memory bends the eye. A weary moan as the walls weigh down. The mold in the walls sing the ancient hymns, the path and the lessons. The blues is cued, the wolf of storied wax, the story never leaving you alone. 

Make no mistake, these little miseries will too be missed. There’s always more low to go. These days of warm bed and full belly will be sorely missed in the dark soon to be. All the heartaches and beat downs long ago burned for warmth, left in deleted accounts and careless envelopes, something to dream on once the dreams are it. The candles burning down, the ending in the work. 

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.