you are my animal

scent and skin and giving in

when instinct takes its turn

breath and bone and coming home

when you finally close your eyes,

a twitch while you sleep, a howling

coming hard at the moon.

the fingers pressed into your hips,

the teeth with a taste for your throat,

a worry of eyes in the pitch of night,

a scruff for a heedless fist.

your meat is the map of my mind,

your mind the illumination to

the mysteries of the moon.

you are the boundless wilderness 

the nest I make in forests 

found in the ancient depths of

my animal heart. You are my animal 

the one I know is true and real.

medicine show

The short timer sun sticks a finger in my eye, rays of reckoning rubbing negatives into my retina, smoke unfurling from my fingers. Birdsong bubbling down to the roots from the crown, the stories they tell to soothe the skies and ward the stones mingling with the put on poignancy  the dusk is always hustling. Vague hints and fool’s prophecy as they put the day’s business to rest. Sights turned to silhouettes as the air cools and the smoke brushes my tongue with silk and cinders. Another day gone slow then done.

Sparrows burble and hustle, fitting in a quick meal before the long dark night. The nights run long of late, and I have been deep in the labyrinth looking for a Minotaur to take out my insides on. The tide of night washes in, the horizon still soft golds and drifting pinks, dusk filling out and climbing down from the rooftops and trees. I sit quietly and take my medicine. Thick smoke, black coffee, and beauty so far away you break.

I am the silt among the sacraments, the source of these sacred texts. Taking in that last bright sky, watching the moon as it looms in your night, written in some forgotten margin or spilling from the pages of a marooned book. I sit amid your garden, and remember where you put the stars. I am the map of furtive moments, the agent of the ink before it flows. Waking in the words that find you, turning in the cauldron of your bones. We will meet before and after, filling in every little in between. We will meet in all the places, though I am not there. The breath before it’s spoken. The medicine in the show. 

thankful

Everybody dies— what makes you so special?

The fear of the finality,

the sentence ends full stop.

The dot dot dash of the rampant heart

at long last parted with its purpose,

with the rest of the wreck gone 

derelict, kicking and clawing,

spurting and oozing as

this vessel is abandoned. I guess

it’s all a little overboard, all

messed up and nowhere to go,

embracing the outs when

the ins have all run out. Dying

the answer written on the unsealed

envelope, the question another

Carnac gag, the incurious 

portion once the pleasure plays

out of the nexts and maybes—

birds do it, bees do it, even

educated fleas do it—

we all bite the dust. So what if

you jump the line, take cuts

call it early? Anything to end

the pain, anything to beat the crowds. 

The fear of taking the leap and 

not making it stick the only

slowing left, still thankful that there’s an out. 

bird in hand

Without so much as a word the world turns the dew to ice, frost on the fields, clouds smeared across the sky. The stir of matter slows, only the earth and birds to witness the breath as it turns to steam, plumes of proof that the husk still lives. A squirrel rules the lines and the high branches, barely acknowledging the dervish dogs as they tear apart the shed. Just another rat to the dogs, they await the opportunity to dispatch it. The cold is catching, stiffing each substance, filling the joints with grit and ache. Wave after wave, each moment slips away. Hour by hour, there is nothing left that counts.

The night met me with contempt, and daylight has never loved me. Sunlight is not my friend. I hunch over the sickness of this spelling it out, sharps in my chest and shoulders, dull ones emanating from my legs and foot. The healing isn’t going well, having gone from doing little to doing nothing at all. The body all pops and perils, reporting calamities at every shift and turn. The mind all the signals at the switching station, the spirit literally a condition of respiration. Last night I saw the moon and it meant all of nothing. A turn of familiar words, a rock as dead as any drooled over diamond or the stone stuck in your shoe. Something to stagger your step a little. Someplace to pin your shiny star.

Black coffee and the daily burdens. Stuck records and the skip to my lou, dead eyed dregs and the endless impositions. ‘Tis the season of thoughts and prayers, winged monkeys and pearl laden gates. All the dumbest, most evil shit we carry as a species. These digressions into special circumstances, the lies we are urged to believe. Had I a quicker path I would settle the bet right now, against the wall of this crumbling house, the taste of metal and oil then the big spice note. One of these days, POW! right in the kisser. All we get is just this once, and I can’t salvage a bit of it. All my lovers turned to strangers, all my chances played out wrong. Just the birds and the squirrels and buckets of piss. This fading fury, this broken word. Another day that can’t be unseen.

the sorrows

Oh, these days of grays and blues. Oh, this sad parade of flesh and bone. The world has a way of not wanting the very things it has created. The world doesn’t sift and sort. We are as we are, with choices and facts and figures we can’t fathom. We are as we are, within our individual parameters, our modes and our leanings. We change or don’t in a place beyond our witness. The possibilities are many, but they aren’t without limit. We work best when we share the benefits and mitigate the ills. Alone, we don’t really work at all. 

The years have grown thin and cold, their hollow eyes, their morbid bones. The body gives way in sprints and slogs, weary organs and worn out joints, missing teeth and diminished capacities. The spirit goes more quickly, never much for ceremony and ready to fold out here in the dull abandon. Where love betrays and oaths break and all that’s left are tasks and duties to uphold while the roof comes caving in. Kinfolk and animals and the ticking of the clock as the world goes dark. The long night and no one speaks. The end years with no one checking in.

The sorrows won’t slow, the gone and the need to go, the begrudged kindness and the smiling curses. Here we go, another night a little worse than the last. Here it comes, the pain that won’t relent. All that’s left just words and weeping. A few more deaths, another betrayal or two. More words without art or merit. More free labor and hidden fees. Peeling the rags off one by one, the bathroom fan, and the bright bare bulb. Blood dried to the wound, a tearing sound— the sweet scent of dead blood and rotting flesh. Time is not my friend, but then, neither were my friends. I step into the shower, sick to death of me. Just like you.

envy

The heart grows old in

greens and golds, the gray

streaked beard and 

plans gone fallow while

the eyes look away.

At the end of the day

this gaze betrays the pettiness of

intention, empty hands

harden into threats and fists

while the gifted and the fortunate

course on oblivious to all

the slings and arrows living 

milk and honey lives have

aimed their way. The saga

woven of sweat and grit and 

God’s favor falling flat

never knowing the blood debt

they carry like their garish

frippery, casually lifted 

upon countless broken backs,

the green seared stare

that scatters the air and

fixes crosshairs whet with

spat out curses at all

the dreams lived without effort 

as if they were the ordinary and

the everyday, stricken by 

a distant star, starved of all

save invective, epithets, and scars. 

the rule

The day burns down until all that is left is night. Sirens and screen flickers and the piano swinging through the solo. Porch lights and lit windows staring out to the street. All the stars flickering through the tidal atmosphere, unseen ripples revealed in botched optics and the opacity of tendered clouds for currency. The hours spent below ceilings and between walls, warmth and shelter to mitigate the season. Recorded music and electric light and the shelves loaded with all that you long to share. The lonesome room with no exceptions. The gifted sorrow, the gaffed noose.

Lately sorrow comes a calling without bothering with an antecedent. One moment holding the course, the next crashing and burning. The cycling has accelerated, the depression deepened, the isolation all but complete. It’s how it is in the later stages of the sickness, the brain so beaten down that the receptors barely work, each day staring at that dread barrel until it seems the only answer. Relief doesn’t come, little respite and performative pleasure rule the day, until only the brief extinction of sleep provides any succor at all. The heart’s fondest longings only serve to harm. The night is cold and uncaring, the daytime brutal and cruel. Cry all night, rail against heaven and hell, do as you please: the bone birthed sadness is the only companion you have.

As madness consumes you, the company thins out. The awful that you carry, the monster that you are wears away at human endurance. People find better ways to spend the day than waiting on your better angels. People find people that don’t make them feel like murder every single day. What help there is isn’t there to help. Incurious philosophers and de facto pharmacists are about the best you can hope for. The ones you love, if you are luckiest of the lucky, will dutifully tolerate you. But to love you is a labor, and you will see how hard they have to work at it. All the never mores pile on top of your litany of sins, and the rules of compañero and kinship quickly become everyone for themselves. All your tender loves hopefully save themselves as you bide your time in dull torment, a little less each day until you find your punctuation. Full stop, dead bang done.