sock it to ‘em

I never know what will make them happy. I don’t get what people like. I admire the art as impact and intention, the action and the work. The breath before they belt it out, the brushwork’s grab and grind, the canvas playing catch with the palette. Art for art’s sake and so goes the serpent swallowing its tail, the ocean in the waves. Like the patchwork patterns cut from sunlight and leaf shadow, I am stamped out from inference and negative space, the notes they didn’t play keeping you up all night. The light buffeted by the wind another set of lensings, the washing of the numbers, the gravitas of the stars. A lot leans into the lap of the observer, meaning not the least of it. The words make their journey, you are the river they ride.

I sit and stare, my position my partition, another aperture built from the limits of the materials available. A vision threaded through the filters of my limits, biased by the revery of being, this not that here not there among the ten thousand acts and laws. Every sense and de facto sentience shuffled through stacks of schema, shapes and the luckless incarnationed and a dance of tongue and rhyme. To be here is to miss the most of it. There is nothing to it, the everything that matters. The statistics will bear me out, here in the innumerable once offs.

This is the strike across the sky, the indulgence of subtle color, the weight of the atmosphere at the changing of the guard. This is the heart pleading, blood lapping up the breath, this bead woven into the restless ribbon of the spirit. Doses of dirt and sun, dregs of dark partings and blasphemous elixirs, the agreement all fine print below this ever imminent exclamation point. Stuck between the being and the mystery, strung along the daisy chained words, crowning the imminent whim I encompass I sit and stare. The becoming moon lit and laden in the shift of sky between tree and eaves, I trail smoke and moments into the forever of a sullen dusk.

sweet tooth

Mostly it’s the ghosts that go 

unnoticed through the moonlit garden

barefoot over gravel and bramble,

running intangible fingertips through 

these pools of light and shape, rippling 

memory and make believe.

It’s never what or whom so much as

where I can put my paws on it,

how to hold it close enough to sink

my teeth in. I hold no claims,

I am without excuse. I indulge

appetite after appetite seeking 

what will please. The mockery in

your eyes and that Mona Lisa

smirk, the stories you do not share

as the words implore and exult, 

your life and limb a tossed off

archetype, prayer and priestess,

altar and goddess the way I tell it, 

me it seems every boy called to the yard.

Lab rat, born pigeon, or lucky bum

flushed or fleeced I am that

unruly beast, hungry ghost

amid the legions and the hosts,

famished and matchless at the feast.

Greasy grinned from the glistening

bones cracked for the marrow,

I hunger past the trappings of the clock,

attached reckless to the instant of impact 

this sweet tooth for all you are and aren’t.

lachrymostly

Maybe I’m waiting on the moon in the window. Maybe I’m waiting on the dinner bell to ring. It’s going to be the same old drag because I’m the same old load.  Pruned down the branched synapses just to the bruised and bitter, firing up the same old neurons to keep the litany on repeat. A chair in a room, sound and light and the worn down body with the wound tight nerves. A saxophone from sixty years ago sounds out. I can see the moon if I turn my head a little. Maybe I will take a look.

So the moon’s on its mission, reeling with its grasp entangled with the clutches of the earth. We’re all along for the hurtle. I’m working the old sore spot, hammering on my stories. Patching up the holes riddled through me with aimless words, stitching together the shreds, adding to the pattern from the palette of shavings and static. Add a few more sentences, tamp down the hopeless with dead eyed star gazing, let the tears zig and flow. So we live in the gods’ dreaming, flickering away on the surface of these endless depths. This slow dissolve from blood to ghost is the ache that’s always on.

The words don’t matter, what counts is the collateral damage they leave. Shards of thoughts too sharp to leave, fragments of fragile tenders lodged forever in the center of your being. A chair in a room, music and a lamp. These ample repetitions through phrase and fragment cruising ‘round the turnaround, small angry engines screaming through the lanes and courts. The moon low in a corner near the sill, the going on still going, the gone still gone. The words not on speaking terms, the tears always showing up empty handed.

burnt

There are those of us disposed as smoke, those of us dispatched by an open window, those of us who come and go and remain unknown. They work the words around us, they pile on anthem, pledge, and prayer. They pass out names and epithets, brutal truths and empty threats. We bleed and suffer, we atone and we lament. We pitch in when the hat is passed, we carry their meanings and their suffer their points as we break and burn. All to be another unmarked grave, another empty overcoat, a digit among the numbers while our names remain unlearned.

It doesn’t matter when my eyes went out. I couldn’t tell you when the fire died. You think you’re the spark, you think you’re the flame, you think there’s something special about the fuel that’s you. It’s hard to keep the focus, it’s hard to hold the form. I’ve moved from gutter to ash heap. My tenses refuse to agree, and I let ‘em fight it out amongst themselves. There’s nothing left of me but a little smolder and a couple lights left on. We are ghosts walking through the partitions, carrying the unspoken parts of the conversation. The moon’s magic tossed upon the waves.

Our lives pass by unseen. Our voices ring out unheard. There’s a lot to see, there’s a lot to say. Dreams painted in avarice and lucre woven into gospel while humble wishes for simple needs are held as blasphemy, the common good disappeared in a turn of the cups. Bearing one inheritance, the capricious greedy few destroy most of it while using the hard parts to beat on the rest. They do not hear the chorus that carries on from before there were voices, they deny all that was written before words. We are the direction of the energy, the incidental disbursements of force and matter in opposition. The spark to the fuse, the burn to the bomb. A little heat and a little light into this vast expanse.

outside the sun

Each dusk it passes the baton of dueling burdens, the bright glare of daylight to the weight of the whole sky at once. The wind going wild, whipping every tree into a frenzy, stampeding all the bags and leaves. Ghost town suburbs running out the clock. All the hopes of the day dashed into shards like the frail vessel that carried them, all the wishes of the dusk already all but dust. The local sun gives way to a host of farther stars, heaven only the speed of disbelief suspended, the universe always including you. The chimes sound, an exalted eminence soon to arrive. Gusts and the kaze of callow kami blow down limbs and shingles. Night falls hard.

Indoors the cacophonies disambiguate, they break down to the building blocks of our inattention, so many bells and whistles and feathers to follow. Nightfall now, and I take to the screens, music from the television and the words on this tablet. I never quite rise to face the day, at night at best I’m treading water. The cosmic rough and tumble to the carnal bump and grind, the trial of watching it all come true. A lifetime of intermittence, these windshield wipers set to “SURPRISE!” On a little, then a whole lot of off. Outside the sun, it’s Oop-Pop-A-Da and vampire etiquette. Nobody’s handing out invitations.

Now it’s old man bones and the night off the leash, chimes pealing out as the wind won’t relent. It’s the death of dreams and clear eyed facts, and the litany of epithets and disasters attached to the frame. Biding time until the curtain comes down, waiting around until these last lingerers pass, thinking in bullets and nooses. No click bait, no breaking news, I’m halfway through my sixth decade of the blues. I’ve reached the stage where most of the friends I’ve had will next think about me when stumbling across the obituary. I’ve reached the stage where I mostly talk to animals. Maybe there’s an object lesson. Maybe there’s a moral to pin this story on. These words will never tell! I’m only getting any better at getting worse. 

afterlife

It might pay to remember 

you are shaking the hand of 

someone whose afterlife 

imagines you on fire

through their fleshed out forevers.

You may be wise to consider 

who you hand your fate,

this pittance, this long haul.

Hungry as the horse is held, 

your life the ashes in

the garden, the dead cold crunch

beneath their boots. You carry

them from round to round, 

propping them up in the clench. 

The ones who only see your smile

in numbers of dead teeth.

repertoire

Before I rise I tease my feet, testing for the latest pain, rehearsing this stunt of standing up. Typically I get it on my first take. I’ve been at it for a while. I step and stumble, unhinged choreography to unheard music, the herky-jerky heel toe gone wrong a preview of spills to come. I am a bundle of coaxial cable, I am a bouquet of shames and haplessness. Here at the twilight of my usefulness, here on the long way down.

The tree is all a whisper with the shimmer and sway weaving through it, the day headed west and smoke loitering in the eaves. It doesn’t take much navigation to get from day to day. The earth does most of the work, your part is largely not falling off. It gets trickier as your pins go from stalwart oaks to rickety splints, but that’s the great thing about the earth, there’s no shortage of things to hold onto. A feather here, a wing there, something to witness as we dissolve and despair. The attachments outlast their bonds, reaching for the next breath.

So another day is done. So the night is on the rise, a tower staring down. Things are passing, lives are changing, younger folk walking different dogs staring at their phones. I wind down slow, watching my pieces go missing, watching the endless changing of the guard. Here and gone, was now not, the impoverished spirits of an imprudent soul dwindling into silence. Tricks and treats and folded ephemera, words gathering like dust. She loves me, she loves me not. How I do go on.