ideation

There is the day, there are the words, there are the systems and the senses. The vacant school field dripping with sprinklers, the mocking birds scolding the cat in the grapes. The feel and the phrasing and the world always so much the same, yet the sickness grows. Blue skies and fair weather, yet my mood is in the wind. The old call to violence over these fresh new failings, the urge towards self slaughter forever in the wings. My whole life an inability to reconcile my wants with reality. This dull relentless longing for a bullet to baptize the wall with my brains.

There is dust on my tongue, there are stains upon the smile I seldom find, there is all the sorrow and this rage. The tales I tell all leading nowhere but into the thickness of language, this seeping from all the wounds in the world. I can feel the press and lift of the atmosphere as the air sails and stumbles, I can hear the lilt and the hesitation of limb and leaf. Music plays beneath all this struggle and sway, my campaign the cracked voice and the closed throat. The song in my heart drowning in all this blood, the tears on my face trails in the dirt. My legacy only ache and confusion, my inheritance wreck and ruin.

The day is slow, the clock is plodding. My skin dissolves at the least provocation. I close my eyes and feel the press of steel. I close my eyes and I am in the sealed garage with the engine idling. I crave the abandon of bones cracking beneath this desolate fury, all this hollow prattle another balloon loosed in a room. The terror of this vivid, daily decomposition always a flicker behind my eyes. The sadness of my lack clinging cruelly to my heart. Each day feels like the day I need to end it, the promise I made to still my hand stuck like a splintered bone in my throat. The burden of this broken brain, the tension of this unbidden flesh, the tatters of my every least intention shredded before my eyes. I don't know how much longer I can hold on. My grail beyond my grasp, my life in scraps and shreds. Every day a blessing I want to end.

some brand new now

The wind threads the lapse between sky and earth, kicking its heels up in the dust. Every day another two stitches, another one cut. Each day the bright reminder of so much left undone, the ruin that declaims your way. Sketch to sketch, skin to skin. The hollows gape before us, each deed drowning in the past, every word the ghost of ten thousand others. The stretch of credulity, the seamless transition from light to light, the dense text of deep abandon. One name, then another. The words just plod and plod.

Like it or not, the evidence suggests that there are other minds at work. They seethe through the bones and the brittle synapses, they leap the gaps and mark the paths and claim some road for the virtue of the spill. They build the towers and steal the treasure and foment all sorts of gods and ghosts in the cracks and the seams. They mistake the tangle for the tenor, and happenstance becomes destiny. They mistake their loss and their limitations for a mystery beyond their noisy meat, heaven proven by the reach of trees, the tumbling world the prize to spurn for a kingdom made of wishes and jokes. The world, for its part, takes no notice.

Now the dog hunts a horsefly, its transgressions answered with gnashing teeth and swift jaws. The sun stipples the long lean of the pine. One thing, and so another, then yet another. The stories just go and go. The porch-light on in the tumbling afternoon, the cigar butt smoldering above the gathering of ash, the clock on the wall always naming some brand new now. Life as a journey, life as a burden, life as a poem discovered. Everything said just so, everything treading water and spilling breath, the poetry another symptom of seeing. Ashes on my belly, smoke threading my every breath. The dust dances with the wind, every origin story an ending alluded. All the words written, orphaned on the page.

the words won"t say

Everything goes up in smoke, everything's the weather. The clouds that gather, the sun that burns, the sky each day and night. I pace the streets and pound the pavement. I watch the traffic ebb and flow. The words will take it either way. The words know no want or way. Come rain, come shine, the foreword and the epilogue. The addendum and errata. The hopes that they bore for you dwindle into fears, the history of rage and blood and broken tomorrows. The words settle, indifferent and aloof. The promise dulls until there is nothing but the waiting for your grave.

So I watch the skies and the birds that run them. So I look to heaven and the stars that never look our way. The rain falls down, and I am resigned to it's blessing. The rain falls down, and I pretend that it's to meet me. The crows on high cackle on the wind, the world working according to their savvy plans. Wings spread as black as faith, as slick as blind ice, slipping along the lines of proof and wonder. The sky rushes down between trees and buildings, the street hissing beneath every turning wheel. I speak aloud, every word swallowed up my the storm.

The thunder comes and the rain is strung in chains off every eave, a hard march across the rattling rooftops and unsuspecting dirt. A sudden sheen, the shear of lightning, the tin roof rumble and ozone in the air. I smoke and think of probable ends, and stretch well passed the credible. The words long since left from meaning, just markers at the intersection, seats left on the plane. I spill my breath and raise my voice, oath or invocation lost beneath the rising din. It is gone at once, though I don't know what this is. A feeling left to wander these parts that the words won't say. The moment once wished for slowly leeched away into these knots and missteps. The world only roads and rain.

top of the world

The sky is bright and the day is blue and warm. Sunlight stirs the skins of things, and the bees just hang from from every bloom. The dry throat of the earth, the dominance of dust, all parleyed past thought by every sense. black wings and evergreens, pine sap and blue feathers, everything finding its level in the end. All the cigar butts and glutted ashtrays, all the unearthed stones and the broken bricks speak to my shallow disarray. My heart sings just as deep and open as any grave.

The gray days ease in between storms and thirsty stones. Lightning spills down and thunder splits the air, storms that rode the restless ocean walking across field and hill. Green fills each bough and lot, an elucidation of insects and spiders seems to flow from the bewitched soil. The clouds brace the sky, making bets and promises as they veil the face of the shining sun. We ease between want and illness, between rhythm and appetite. We slow before every obstacle, we speed down every slippery slope. The path of rout and rapine somehow fleshed out in every feeble faith. The sky wanders, the earth wanders, while we think the world wants our pleadings.

There is rain waiting in the forecast, there are shadows sticking to every skin. My story is all love and squander, it is the wide wander from the distant primal seas unto these days of empty and of ache. The words well with typical tears, the litany goes dribbling down my beard, slobber slick and aged gray. All this blood and fury hobbling in shabby circles, boots caked with mud, books heavy with dust. I speak aloud the expected spells, love and hunger, death and wealth. The bent bones of this beaten man so keen to give up every ghost.  The shuffling gait of this stumble bum bearing the brunt of my daily blasphemies. This supplication spent for the weather when heaven is only stars and storms.

vernacular

We ride the tide of this ocean without sea or shore. We feel the brush of creation flying by, the throat only opened by the song, this press of breathless prayer unbound towards eternity. The scratch of the nub, the liquid shift of captured ink, until the click of fingers, unto this conspiracy of restless thumbs. The echo bears some slight enchantment of the life which it just so recently fled, the blush of that first reach, the ruffled feathers of this natal tongue. The choicest portions, the richest sops deluged at once by ancient appetites, the story all heady glut and starveling thoughts. The flocks that leave from sagging lines into ineffable flight, their shadows drawn dark and reluctant to the sky. The least intent a thousand fitful ripples.

The sun falls with its usual disregard, shadows slink and winds pace the rails. The sunlight climbing up the trees, the damp earth sodden with dusk. The lilt of song, the screech of tires and breeched traction light and silt through the senses vast transactions. That hint of a smile you always hear in her voice, that brightness of heart that her thought on eyes conveys, the depths of digression the flood of memories over these random skins. All the broken teeth and blown kisses buried far from the desert of my wind-worn ribs, the trails of secreted roots and lively flowers. Her own bones and breath the gorgeous foundry for this life renewed. All the wounds that can be carried, I will carry some more. The only oath that exists there in every breath.

I am a space between phrases. I am the trip of the tongue, not even a breath left to lose. The strange enchantment of dull technology leaving me to unwind in these long hallways behind your mind. Some cartoon haunted house complete with shifting wall and spinning bookcase, your mind a mystery machine to these slivers retained. Adrift in these rough constellations, the condensation of each sense to a few lithe strokes, the loosing of a resting ghost sealing your lungs and lips. You are there amid the masses, you reach and beckon entangled in my drift. You are here with-in the reach of speaking. You are here, with-in these shambled breathings, the cast of my blood on every shed word. Love as letters, a flag filled with wind.

bell-mare

Don't ask who cast this shadow, don't tell me what the sun should want. The reach of limb, the sweep of the sky. The weeping wounds that closed so long ago. This flesh infested with dreams and memories, the heavens surrendered to silhouette swallows and drowsy crows. The world fled its flesh and forever haunted ours, its songs resonating in our foolish throats, its will the folding of our slippery tongues. The trees sway and the rain descends to the brutal earth. The light goes, along with everything i ever thought was mine.

There is a ringing in every inference, slow circles walked in the cold and dark. Branches scratch at the windows and the storm holds court in the dizzying depths of the midnight sky. Somewhere there are voices, caught up in the lively wind. Somewhere there are reasons lighting inhuman eyes. The heart skips and scrapes with each percussive gasp, the walls ache and sigh with the weight of the falling wind. The old ways pace the earth while we speak aloud to our hopeful myths, always howling for some intercessor. These faiths of dull extinction coiling on our nervous tongues, these prayers that stick to teeth and ceilings. Belief a world burdened by words while the night keeps its own counsel.

The world turns, spilling rain and shadow. The world turns, its clockwork of boiling stone and hushed vapor ticking away amid these dead-eyed stars. I pace the floor, I trace the path the rain removed. These words seep through, the spells and invocations of the beaten heart and the bruised bones falling beneath my feet. The wild wings and the spent breath of beasts wasted on the confusion of thing and thought. The old ways and bitter warnings treated like fairy stories while we bow and scrape to the fables that endure. Our lives a foregone conclusion, everyone knowing how it is bound to end. The lucid chemistry of living enough to fill that broken cup, the self the meat on the map of knotted proteins and native grace. The wolf awaits, its skin the restless appetite and the focused wish. When the wolf is at the door, I don't break my stride. When the wolf is at the door I don't hesitate to let it in.

these cold mornings

These cold mornings I awake forgetting that time is fleeting, then I reach for you. This glimmer of distance the dawdling of the clock on the wall, the mumble of gears turning away. The sense of the press of your hips against mine as dark dreams rouse me. The sense of your warm shadow lingering long after your flesh has left. Sleep dashed along with dreams as I am fitted back into my life. The ashes lingering forever in the fire where they formed.

I feel you like the coal so close to my palm, I taste you like the greasy reach of each sacrificial pyre. You oblige my mind like ritual, engage me like the fixed-teeth of the bike it's like riding. All these words wet sweepings of each enduring ache, all my days just the longing to say your name. This chance enchantment the whole wheel of the world, your hushed perfume still clinging to my pillow, your essence forever mingling with my breath. I know you as wish and whim, the wonder of you such an exhalation, a spell made real by speaking. I reach for you through these fiddled drizzles, shapes bent with tongue and shock to nuzzle with your every fervid moment yet to be. Memories made with the tips of tongues and fingers. History told to blood and bone.

It is this restless incandescence you rile from inside my mind that burns through my every night wide awake and so alone. The wander of your eyes from dusk to dreaming, the impact of your smile so like spending breath. I gasp and reach and grasp. My heart goes wild with want and fury. The way you warm and blush beside m touch. The way  you claim my every sense. This distance always set against us. This closeness always calling us home.