new moon

The window is always open. The night is always on its way. Bones that were wrecked before their reckoning bloom anew. The drag and draw of the patient furious earth, the tip toe touch of the unseen tide, the fabric woven fresh through the shabby shape that burns bright below your dreams. Your confetti kisses and wry unyielding eyes, the rollick in the way you wear your self. The clock always counting. The sun kissing shade to root.

The night carries on, all wrack and rattle. A banging from the backyard, the rasp of this blue bias sight. I can’t tell which storm to weather. I don’t know which cat to call. The oldest wounds ache on and on. The endless stare of the the occluded goddess bending the boughs to their knees, as the winds schemes and clouds goggle. Trees sigh with a cracking like that of bones, a wooden shifting from root to crown, the sway of contrition sweeping the eaves.

I am ever the unspent letter, the composition of the never said. Moaning from moment to moment. Limping from score to score, I am the stain of clumsy strings and guileless song. The page a blind prophecy, hurtling on and on across the expansion. The lyric skies and the joyous soil. Spiraling further away down the night. 

sorry, Horatio

The shadows fill in the fence as the sun strolls up the gray blue grade, winter a residue of cool nights and calendar names. The light lashed to crack and crevice, sweat beads slightly before being wicked away by the dry boned sky. Over the fence, children are playing in the schoolyard, screams and bells and the mad laughter of recess ringing out across the block. The morning is soft and clasps the last still moments as noon edges near. Everything happens at once.

I worry away at the frayed corners of consciousness, words always a sorry excuse for perception. Being at the best of times always boiling over, suchness and thusness and the dance of opposites. Something someone once said, fable and allegory clotted in the blood of existence, sparrow and nuthatch and the other mainstays of this mush mouthed augury. Every glistening wing and delicate victory of triumphant survival awaiting its pin. Every careless breath, every heart fraught syllable meant to add to the collection. The moment preserved, the authoritative this is so. 

It’s not that I don’t want to know, it’s just that your story isn’t the story that you know to tell. The this and that of this augmented gossip, telephone for the shriveled soul, can’t contain the truth. Just another agreed on game. Just the latest trend of the tongue. I’m sitting here with the music playing loud. I’m out here waiting for the coffee to kick in. This tall ship creak of bone and ligament, the rasp and sputter of this burdensome breath. I don’t trust the words, I don’t trust my senses, the directions always heading off. The bright sun of a California winter sitting in a tree, k i s s i n me. The truth abandoned long ago, and faith not in my skill set. 

heir apparent

We come to the end of all the lying. The fairy stories of god and money and civilization. The long con that just keeps going on, the pathetic emperor with his dick hanging out. The be yourselfs all part of the misdirection for those of us unwanted and without place, the frills and thrills just there to distract you from the butcher’s blade. Look to your left, look to your right. Whatever’s there shouldn’t be.

Cold hands and come to Jesuses. The greed older than gold, the ill paced fire of the changing states of matter all we’re heir to, the platitudes that spill from our foul flapping yaps that ought to earn us each a bullet in the brain printed up on anything that’ll take the words. The legacy of the liar apes. Sound and fury and the which-a-way wind. 

Have nots and never weres. Trains that never leave the station. Plans made just to make God laugh. The bubble begging to burst. Keep lying to yourself. It’s that, and meat and murder— the crowded table, the empty larder, and the contents of the cup that runneth over. 

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.