The small things come hardest—
the fragment of geode,
the obsidian shard
muddled in the dust,
the stacked books and
favored feathers, postcards
and lovely works, art
crafted in proof, oh proof
that once I was loved
or at least time was served,
this ravaged sediment of
labor and skill, letters left
to their tenses, gifts strewn
across my life. Nothing
so treasured, nothing so
beloved as the little glimmers,
nuzzling the nape of your neck,
forever’s thrilling shift to never.
It isn’t only the labor of the honeybee or
the sacrifice of the sugarcane,
this sweetness
I seek, it is my work
through this world and the words
I founder in, the heft of these wishes,
the hunger of a love-starved heart
bidden to the hopeless and
the gone, clinging to the wheel
as it turns and turns though the sweet
comes as strong black coffee and
the burn of the cheap brown cigar,
smoke rising in plumes and coils,
the hard head of a problem dog or
the ghostly tread of the rooftop cat
deigning briefly to sleep beside me,
though the night is too warm and
I sweat fresh constellations at all hours,
this sweet like the cactus flower awaiting
the tiny bat to pollinate, the wild
laughter of the children when loosed
upon a world that is more than ready,
all concrete curbs and the glint
broken bottles offer up, blood hungry
geometries upon black asphalt.
It is your healing hands in their ministry,
honey sweetness as they gathered my love.
It isn’t mine to sing though
the singing isn’t stealing,
the song picks its own
team, not just the sparrows
chittering in the pines,
not just the dogs
raising hell at the neighbors
shuffling down the driveway like
lords of the earth, haughty about
the home. Our voices raised
like the shock of defeat,
raised like the baffled revenants
beneath some Christ-y craft or
muddled magics, we sing
down the crisp leaves, we low
the bright out of the sky
sad machines that function with
all due gravity and the green that’s gone.
But the sky is blue and the black
crows choose their riots amid
the clamor of cars crunching leaves,
the late flies, the blinding sun
bowing on its way out.
We sing and sing
wash us clean, love us true
our Sunday song loud and strong,
hand after empty hand, the long day
lost as I sing and sing.
The sky goes blue for a breath or two, the last lashings of sunlight stirred into the heap of smoke, heaven always holding out for someone better. The day is heat and habit, all the young folk loosed past the limits of their patience, as I hang around with the dregs and drags. The sun will set, and I will again be erased. I will be erased.
The day never loved me, the day never does. The night won’t abide me, too much left undone before the setting sun. The smoke sits thick inside the skin, dirty lungs and squandered heart, fire sale soul flickering behind dusty glass. Time is unkind to the ones that never fit, disowned by our life’s loves, cast askance over steel and stone. I’m the name left off the list. I’m the one that remains unclaimed.
No one’s calling back, no one’s looking up. This day burns down, the moon waiting in the wings. There’s nothing to be done. An old man with nothing to say and all the words in the world. The party already running riot next door, glasses sliding down my nose, long past the age of invitation. People tend to their children, their tomorrows thick with family and friends and all the reasons that they will. I sit on the porch, missing someone that hasn’t missed me in months. I sit here, no one saying a word.
Again the night comes down from the eaves and trees, shadows filling up the scenery, the day done at once. The day came and went without any help from me, things ever as they are always. The sun swinging by without asking, the light comes and goes, leaves me to my notebooks and my catacombs. Around in sick circles I carry the ember, the torch I bear, the flame I keep. The west just a whisper, and I speak your name. I breathe the wicked atmosphere and I say your name.
I swallow the black coffee, I smoke the smoldering cigar, I hold close the roots and the radiance, the linger and the light. I dwindle down to the vigil, I take the moment to my heel. The heart settles the rhythm, the blood breaks upon the shores, entity and organism. The animal and its eyes. The night falls fast, buried and burned and stirring in its tomb. I tie blessing after blessing to the tail of the moon, awaiting the invocation. Here for the slow unfolding, waiting for the invitation.
The hours slow, thickening in the smoke and shadow, gaining their depth in the dark. Cars glide by, the trembling reach of headlights, the taillights hoping no one looks. The flesh shines in slips and slivers, the turning car, the garage lit and tumbling white into the night. The breath struggles through the stones and gargoyles strewn about the atmosphere, the landscape of the badlands clambering through the lungs. Lonesome, I crave the devotions of adoration, the magic of the stations met and the ritual kept. The empty seeps and pools, the animal anchored between earth and moon, the entity awaiting your shine. Eyes open wide, all for the asking.
The moon reaches down
through the iron of
my roots, shining
soft amongst my crown of stars.
I cup my hands to drink my fill,
then I drink again,
we talk the days,
the nights we tell
our secrets and our spells.
Oh becoming One,
oh declaimed radiance
amorous upon the hunt
the heart takes wings
while the rest takes time.
I look up, eyes unmet meadows
wet with forest breath,
sparking with stellar salt
the moon every blessing met.
The indulgent magic back about, the mystery running free, sink a stone behind the earth the shine that finds the moon. The book broken at the spine, the ash a second coming of the sin. The smoke and stones in equal numbers, the numbers plugging in, it is within the becoming. The story at its most, as we bathe in the ricochet of sun and cinder, everyone with something to say. The crossroads blur with traffic, the center all around.
It is a boast, it is a blessing, a passing of the flame in the gathering of light. The burden of the repetition to keep the beat. The silken rocks of ritual, the press of flesh and bone, the pathways at the intersections. The tensile strengths of steel and skin. All the rapture of the arrival passing through, another emanation of the station while the passengers change. The words behind all this wanting and the way each word becomes you. The containment of location in the entity you breathe out.
I am just the notation of intention. I am the sheets to bear the score. The shine climbing the drear dying tree. The figures you see if you stare. You sing out and the song is there. You listen and the music looms. The gaze when the moon goes looking, the appetite when the hunger speaks. The drowsy bloom of shape and languor, the body there and gone. The chorus that joins in your least inkling, the orchestra that lets loose wild thunder at your whim. Your heart beats out its ellipses, your breathing knowing the score. You at once all want and will, the magic in your mouth.
