dusking

The blue bends gray, the stays of the cool blue day at last loosed, the sun settling for the other side, my fingers cold despite the gloves. I peer over my reading glasses, now years since I possessed a pair of prescription specs, squinting a little to focus my astigmatic left eye, watching the dogs browse the mud and shrubs as traffic passes and the light leaves me. Just like everything else I think, too typically me, true enough despite the dismal lensing, the dark filling up the creases and corners, cobwebs hanging ragged from the peeling eaves. Another day down, another night to do. Bob Dylan transitions to Erykah Badu, I scratch a dog’s ears absent of intention. I am mostly unscratched itches myself.

I catch a glimpse of a white pickup speeding by too briefly to get the make. Yet another of the long list of not my strong suits, I probably couldn’t have IDed it even if I had been gawping at it taking notes. The stretch of headlights now swabbing at the corners of my distracted gaze, I still don’t have a clue. My ignorance grows more willful with each year. What I don’t know a going concern.

Still on the front porch, the night now fastened tight, I do my thing. Thumbs tapping away at the smudged screen, I fill in a little of the blanks, my lonesome now confined to this awful blog. I contract as my world cools and dissipates, ain’t misbehaving a technicality rather than a romance, an outcast dusking away his dismal days. Lit by the bare lamp of the porch light the dark closes in, my shadow skewing left, my heart a fucking fugue. This vacancy brimming over, the long night hungering on. 

never never

The rain came to leave, as is the way of things. The temporary ever tempered with the sense that you’ve seen it, deja vu the true meter of our being. The gutters swell much like other swollen gutters, the heart turns blue from all those bad beats. The sky strains and spits, the pitter patter spatter on the patio roof keeps time. Sadness of what is blends with sadness of what will be, colored by the hue of that which will never be. Only this brutal mood sustains.

We become what we do or don’t, we become the cruel truths and the catcalls, we become who we keep and what we lose. This destitution of place and self and station, the black and blue of used to be, the cycle of breath and gut and thought all gone awry by the laws of humanity and causality beset. A self inflicted wound is still a wound. Nowhere welcome is close enough to nowhere to go once all the inside empties out. In life the losing just won’t stop.

I get why they all get going. I get why the gone stay gone. Still, the wished for world has its say. The absence rings out, the hallowed hope hollows, the horizon keeps its own counsel. So I fill in the blanks, time wasted on the fly, the word after worthless word of my hateful head and hopeless heart. I hold my loathsome orbit because I cannot change my course, this bitter circling all I know. No joy, no hope, just waiting around to die. The rain is gone, the well’s gone dry, and hell is what you make of it.

knell

The greatest trick God ever pulled was blaming his malarkey on the devil. Passing the buck and dodging responsibilities being yet another benefit of omnipotence. From the bullshit in Eden to heckling poor Job, I Am proves the alpha and omega unworthy of worship, a creator blaming his creation for his own crummy, reckless work. The gospel of ‘cause I say so continues to be a popular one, however wrongheaded and immoral they might be. Blame the victim, blame your lackeys, blame the devil and the deep blue sea: claim the glory, nothing more. Power is still a coward’s game.

The compass is busted, the law a dice toss, evil the primary attribute of our finest institutions. The lies have become their only creed, spreading very literally like a cancer. Authority the last refuge of a scoundrel, we are beset by gunhands, brutes, and predators in sets and uniforms. We haven’t come close to seeing the worst of it yet. A criminal conspiracy continues to burn the earth beneath us. The skies are thick with ready death. Doom is nigh, and it’s on the clock.

Myself, I’m past my expiration date. An old man already in middle age, the years are not kind to the crazies, at least not the poor ones. My foolishness and behavioral disorders are my likely executioners, my own hand in some mood swing horror, or the looming consequences of compulsion and bad choices. Now, though, my murder seems more likely than it has since I was a kid taking chances. Whether it will be from uniformed lawless flunkies enforcing some edict, or from the chaos generated by money grubbing nihilists destroying civilization, murder is crackling through the atmosphere of late. You can watch the combo platter of vile criminality and cowardly dishonor end the world in real time tomorrow, defending the indefensible, all to avoid ever paying the bill.  Hand on the Bible while the devil collects his due. 

this is a wilderness

Don’t let the cover fool you. Don’t let the words work their spells. The truth never sticks to the telling. The world is always more than you can know. Maps and legends and scaled down wholes. The road is only a coincidence when you’re driving in the dark. This is the heart of the story, all salt and woe. This is a wilderness.

A life is meant to be read aloud, all the living left on, lips tongue and tooth eager and aware. The words fall flat, and the slow circling begins. Days gone gray, nights grown cruel, age only an inevitable effect. No belle of the ball, no cock of the walk, no respite or earthly blessing. Just fate’s heavy right hand and fanned out electromagnetism, the soul lost in the depths of the lie. 

The fool loses before the game’s begun. The fool falls down as if in play. When the way of the fool becomes the way of the world, oblivion takes the day. Save your shitheel plans and your idiot prayers. This is a wilderness: you will be devoured. 

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.