seasonal

Cold in the morning, dark in the house. All the animals are practicing their dreaming, rasping and wheezing away. My hands fumble for a pocket, they are fitful, full of cups and keys. I work what locks there are, stepping outside into the cold and glittering morning. Instantly the bones in my hands sing of their familiar complaints, my breath cast in clouds and exasperation. Each hour awake seems earlier and heavier than the last. The day always begins by getting ahead of itself. I am always struggling just to catch up.

Steam from the coffee cup, small comfort brought in these draughts and kisses, the pitiful needy sips craving wakefulness and warmth. I swallow the hot dark coffee, luxuriating in my one extant romance. That confounding of mood and habit, that confusing of stress with joy. I am up early, chasing after the wreckage of my indolence. I am up early, waiting for my day to begin.

I lack the reason of a raccoon, I lack the purpose of a possum. The winter is upon us, and all I do is ache for rain. I abide the idiosyncrasies of the weather, smoking and spilling steam, choking on this sickness, spitting out calamitous verse. I step clumsily through the lives of these abandoned and broken children, my work another example of too much problem addressed with a dollop of solution. I think about the next meal, the next check, old romances and pretty young things. I scribble something down, and make whatever move is ahead.

incognito

I only ask because otherwise there is only silence. I only say because the stars are all sharpened and the weather permits. The slide from each tension all the reason you keep hiding, that slippery ease of that awful fall. Each day stretched tight around you, all cigarette and blindfold. Each day that trick of William Tell, done playing about as Robin Hood. That location traded for speed, that a folding map for the whole wild world. I only ask because I know you will never say.

Once you drew pictures on the wall, once you gave interviews to the mirror. Singing in the shower, the rest of the house grew silent, wrapped around you. The clink of bottles, the brush by the sink. Candles always melting onto the tables and floor. The midnight feel held by your open eyes. The moment where all confessions begin.

I spoke aloud, dropping your name to the wind. I spoke so soft, the wind whistling by. A voice then no voice. A name then nothing. A hot shower, the icy rain. Locks and keys and blunt necessities. The radio and headlights and that sharp, quiet distance between the coming day and the failing night. Aim or not, the arrow flies. Name or not, it will find you there.

antecedent

I stand and stare, backlit on the front porch, shivering, watching the rain. It is all that I can manage, just to find that room to feel. The cold air, the hard rain, the gaps in the traffic, my patchy insistence on remembering. My arms clasped tight across my chest, my breath coiling gray and strange. The rain and my heart keeping poor time, you somehow always almost there, some habit of delirium the only calendar either of us keep for long. Cold fingers drizzled across the keyboard, this dialect that always finds me silent, wanting to sing.

I think of you near the open car window. I think of you in the color of the freeway going by. It rains, I shower, the sun rises or sets. You are in the margins and the liner notes. Each day each thing just trying to find you waiting in the wings. So far away no light can find you. So close that you are never really there.

The storm rolls in, all intensity and arrival. Another night of rain, another chill that will not warm away. These empty aches and painful blushes. Your claim upon my day a flag you dropped without even meaning. Your call through the weave of the wear of the day, your breathless distance as we near another ended night. I write this at this least last hour, another set of fingerprints left drifting about the world. The reason only telling because the rhyme got away.

the blue of the morning, the bright of the moon

All the ordinary entanglements were lost by then, strangers in the forest, footsteps in the rain. I had walked for years in my own wake, wearing out the shape of circles, grinding down my stride. I had followed my own loss so closely I carried that air of completion. I seemed as if I had already spoken every last word. Ask heaven, and all it has are clouds on its face. Ask heaven, and everything is stars in its eyes.

My age caught up with me as I stood too early, a little uneasy without any light. My age caught up with me, just waiting in the road. The chill in the air, the distance in the shine in her eyes, the blue of the morning and the bright of the moon. I feel the shifting of weather with wings, the strained air clapping at the very act of flight. I feel the tilt of the world as the day falls away, calling every clock that will follow. My hands ache in the cool of dusk, pain like dread on fire. My fingers just tap out the count.

The numbers pause, then the numbers tumble. Fingers feel sore just knowing. Eventually accounting is abandoned, another lost faith to fade into myth. The words take the long way, around about the meaning. You ask the sky as if it listened. You ask heaven, and all the rest is listening.

precipitate

The old ones always said they could smell it in the soil, the change in weather, the phrasings of days. Outside, I smoke with cold fingers and a wet cough. I cast a tether towards the menace of darker clouds, coiling with the coming storm. I smell the earth, see the change in the rate of birds feeding startled into flight. The years bury me little by little in the business of the sky. Rain is always waiting, above these whispers and tides.

There is nothing to tell you, not a thing that I can find that you didn't learn of long ago. There is nothing at least that I could say, my language so weary and fraught with abuse. The world has its ways of getting its message across, the fruiting of hidden fungus, the clusters of birds just below the clouds. The world gathers its gossip and its lies and finds me when I stand still enough. I shiver in the flux of weather, the chill and the sunlight, the rush of silence just before the rain. I watch the rain spill towards this idle invite.

It seems like magic, the thought first then the thing. It seems that way as the habits of the world grow familiar, trampling the world with beasts and signs. Wait long enough and the bus will stop. Wait long enough, and most anything is possible. The slight of hand that perception moves us, skipping us ahead of deft sequence, turning the light inside out. Watch long enough, the pattern will play out. Watch near enough, the rain will come the moment you call. This neat end, this fated kiss.

the Christmas card

The air is cold, so let's write down our letters. The sky is gray, so let's settle all our distant wishes with postage and pictures cast out into the winter world. So it is snowmen or baby animals, family pictures or gilded manger scenes. Jesus versus world peace, Santa versus the eskimo. A cardboard sentiment of secular blessings or pious love, our hopes that we can cross the silence damping down our hearts written in slippery ink. The night is dark, so let's try to find some light.

We hold these lists of blood and names, these crisp scraps of kin and time. Childhood friends and second cousins, lovers now married and friends now divorced. From our daily entanglements to our forgotten markers, from those at the table to those outside all our circles, we give what words we may spare. The promise we want to keep to ourselves, that we will never forget.

I grant you all my least binding wishes, those that leave room for any missing details. The dead pets left resting and the troubling rumors overlooked. Our past scrapes and grudges unmentioned as if we all can learn to forget. Our bruises and kisses and all those enduring words. As if there was a love that abides these slips and ruins. As if love was enough to sustain us through all our lapses, through the conspiracies of time and geography. I speak to you of hope like smoke trailing into the distance. Despite these dying fires, I wish you all the best.

the weight of days

The world is contained with a shrug and a shroud, the gray chill settling every bet. Fingers crack and flesh breaks, the work unexceptional and unending. It is that tune that plays on and on, even as you wince and curse. This pale aching moment, the weight of day upon day.

You drive four hundred miles just to fill out a time card. You finally arrive home, only to find new ways to fail. The things as they are written, the things better left unsaid-- they all surface, slow and blunt. No one tells you anything, but you know you are only getting worse. That pot, watched or not, is bound to boil.

It should be enough to say it once. And said a thousand times ought to be enough to get it right. The sickness and the repetition and the frustration and the empty all add up, and soon no one is left listening. Nothing left to say, and still you can't stop talking. The conversation drags on, between you and the dusty walls. The conversation drags on even though you know you need to go.