semiotics

Always there is the lie of every letter. Always there is the danger of the restless dust. The face framed upon the wall, the face staring daggers from inside the mirror. The story written over and over, the song going on and on. That hint I am troubled by so much telling and so little to say. The relative positions of tree, bird, and sun. Footpads and fingerprints. The inherent inadequacy of the softest sell.

There are always armchair quarterbacks. The chosen and the driven, then the broad deluge. Rock stars and session players, then the rest of us picking up. After awhile, you have to take your eyes off the map and recognize the road you're on. After awhile, you have to recognize what the world already knows. The ache and the labor. The worry and the love. The scratchy crawl of insistent ink, each smudge and crease of the vast decline. The workers and the dreamers, the watchers in the wings. At some point, everyone already knows.

I watch the wind move the high leaves. I watch the smpke coil off into lit particulars and poems. Three crows cross the sky, holy and irreverent. Dogs and cats loll, scattered about the thirsty yard. It isn't the story, it's the scene. It isn't the word, it's the way. Finches flit and fuss above me. Life goes on and on. I watch as oceans of ash dance in the dwindling light. The hungry wind and the dying pines, the pictures painted on the empty hallways of the mind. The urgent mystery, the muffled secrets, the hours that scrape and crawl. This vacant claim, this endless kiss.

be still

It is the sort of sky that just longs to be unsettled. It is that part of heaven where no-one wants to look. All blush and ever leaning, the smallest hint of sugar dusted on the tongue. That hush that makes it seem as if something will be said. That moment that moves like water, spilling over the end of the world.

We measure it in pieces, the burnt flesh of sacrament, the burnt sugar of the poem. The eyes that find us, the hands that fail. The world goes dark, all bliss and intonation. The light goes low, hinting of that rapturous lust. Paint me a picture, sing me a song. Let the story take it out to sea. The word upon the water, the wing upon the wind. The tongue flicks against the lips. Anything could happen lost among the stars.

It's all good, then it's gone. Everything is peachy, then it's pie. Come cliff or seaside, the road goes on and on. Sword or pen or plowshare, the snake will never die. Every dog has its day, every worm has its turn. Wonders do not cease. It is the words that wear thin. All this talk runs down. Let the sky divide its bounty. Let the world carry its share. Amid these stars and silences be taken by this grace. Out here past the reasons tend to the fires that must be.

clout

Long ago I was loosed on this world, and still I wait and wander. The words skitter and sulk, caught in that just so light. Everything leaning hard into sun or shadow. Everything plain and simple with so much waiting in the wings. Everything slain and tasted with so much gone for good. I lose track of the time, I lose my place. I seem to always be in the middle of starting over. Hard to keep track of the trailing tongues and soap-box spellbinding when no one is listening.

Still the world goes about its business, the sky flowing overhead, the earth spinning underfoot. My foot prints trail beneath, my foot prints lost below. The days are strung together more or less in order. The calendar hanging just in case. All these clocks and numbers such pitiless harbors, every tale told to the tune of alibi. Laws invented to excuse investigations. Crimes made up on the spot to serve as crowd control.

The years peel away and still I'm talking. I miss the point and won't shut up. Filthy rags and bitter bones scattered in the circle. Worn out jokes and broken bottles littering my wake. Was I ever close to right? Was I never in the mix? I cannot count my blessings, cannot begin the know how much I do not know. The day burns down, and I am covered in dust and ashes. I keep going on with no-one to tell me no.

sacrifice

It is gleaned slowly, this bit of cloth, this slip of soul. The heavy hearted ache of the earth, the stubborn silence of the tenser metals. That pull that harrows through the slabs and the sparks, the haunted house feel of seeing someone familiar gazing from a stranger's eyes. Day by day the reserves are drained. Year by year the treasures are pawned. They ask for the keys and your cooperation. It is an adjustment you will have to make, at long last so devastatingly free.

That is the trouble with the universe, everything having to go somewhere. These flecks of bone and meat, empty eyes and tufts of skin. Dust once, dust again, the journey always the story left mingling with the in-betweens. The road earned and the road owed, stop signs and open intersections. Lists of things and heaps of things and forgotten things never again to mention. Big enough it may as well be endless. Big enough to hold a few eternities and still have room to lose a few. Look at this map and try not to find a monster.

So I bide my time with the parting breeze, feel the wind blow through. The slow burn of desiccated flesh, the long haul of ache and fall. I trace the shape of the last incantation. I watch as further words are marked and swept away. Sweat beads slowly, cooled by the stingy whispers and the off-color remarks the season must have saved up. The world cools slowly as the air warms and starts. It spins and spins, breaking bolts and kicking sparks. Every day a sacrifice, every day a savior.

bets and debts

Sometimes the sunset is dressed to kill, sometimes it lets it slide. I never could keep count, lost and dumb and always a little amazed. I never knew they had my number and were always keeping score. Some days it goes from blue to black, some days it just burns and burns. I sit until the shadows take me. I am still and I am swallowed by h the depths of the gathering night.

Tonight the dusk flows slowly, closing in as hints and secrets. The thrill of a subtle breeze touching sun warmed skin. The whisper of insects in the air and the blur of birds through the trees. The crowded call of music approaching, the drawl and reach of music as it pulls away. Crows stream ink along the sky, flying to whatever roost awaits. The effect is strangely plaintive as I submerge into this usual stupor. The whole day gone or going, the life it leaves behind.

There is that sundown pause, then that sliver of a moon. The world takes a breath and eyes open or close. Another dusk bereft of direction, another stumble of well-worn words. The road imagined always rundown by the road that is, I never believe my luck. I paw and sulk and brute my way from nowhere to its mother with barely scar or bother. I stoop unscathed while all those betters and youngers line up on the precipice. Deep in tree and shadow I leave these marks and scratches. Gifted though as far from my wishes as my heart is from the nearest star. Though lost un this muddle of sadness and doubt, I am clearly blessed.

dead branches

The wind spills and the sunlit dust seems to flicker and strobe, light lost in tiny spaces and brittle bough. A dirty hat on a dirty head, a dirty mind for a dirty bed.  The bloom off the rose bleeding into the afternoon. Just suppose this was a lonely road, long and weary and never quite wide enough to allow a pass. Just suppose this was only about the direction you are not. Again this fit of blood and burn, this split of root and branch. Each of us our sea of reasons. Each of us our seasons of faith and want.

This is always once the fever fires, always once the riot arrives. We are blessed with the liberty of second guessing. We are heavy with the wisdom of lives we never live. Once the war, we note the rumor. Once the absence captured we argue after the reason never there. All these little candles and so many shadows cast. All these fickle fables there vaguely on my head. Half an illustration so mistaken it could be some invention of my memory or the press of lips against this burned down imagination. Rock n roll playing on some passing radio, dopplering out in some qualified infinity. Drum and guitar, all the stars we never saw. A cheap life echoed in some other's end.

As always it is dust and thunder. As always it comes down to blood and ghosts. Root and branch, bird and bloom. The old test chestnut, wrong objections and the trick of choice. Water needing nothing but the bluff of its own level, uncles and cousins and dense confusions of court and kin. The measure always hard pressed against its limits. The means a little crueler than you'd like. These graveyard trophies and wake up calls. Always an angle, always a debt. All the words shuffled and stacked against this prescience again and again. Forever someone I'll never be, forever somewhere I'll never know. Tears and prayers spent for the song and the habit, best of blue wishes and heaven's mysterious help.

love letter, inside out

I'm not much to look at, rags and paste and mumbled aches. I have to hide my eyes from the sun, pale and vaguely searching away. I have to elude the truth just to keep on course. Days wasted on wordless reading and stifled thought. Out among the dry air and aimless dust I wait to wear out my last welcome. Every shadow weighs the same until it is lifted by the wind.

The world doesn't work so much as whirl and whirl, the fleeting calendar and the restless seas. Blood is spilled, candles lit. The reel seems to rock and sway, dance upon dance, brick upon brick. All this persistent building, the ruck and tilt of memory, forests of kelp stinking up the shore. All this reckless dreaming the bones that hold the tide. Maybe it is the moon I am missing. Maybe the story can only find you once you've gone.

I tire of all these heights and hollows. I tire of the drift of dreams and days. The sun stinks of piss and rust. Life will grant a million wishes, one by one. Years burn into clean gray smoke and the flavor of soot. Who knows who wins the prize? Who knows what next one may awake? I write these on the paw smudged windshields.  I write these in flowers of the graves of dead gods. Every word worn out, holding onto this last latest breath.