Hope leaves like heat leaves, diffuse, spectral, ever rising into the secret cant of sky and stars. Waiting only another aimless religion, imposed like a twelve-step deity, an articulated resignation to a lack of other options, another way of embracing deep and abiding flaw. Moving by rote from too hot to too cold, no baby bear equilibrium visible from this point in the spectrum, my eyes take on the naivety of streetlights weeping onto a wet and quiet road. Eyes slowly becoming the color of their scant substitutions, eyes the color of wet pavement, of black ice right before the slide into the unlit chasm below. Pointless phrasing, faint affirmations, notions as true a paper valentines. As true and pulp and ink and directions found for too much feeling.

Ducks in a row, all our lives. Ducks in a row, all these trembling little victories, all these soft, breathy sounds of defeat. All the bottles lined up in the mind, the check list of incompletion awaiting the pen stroke, the bright ring the bell to birth it. The lush multiplicity of existence, to be broken, to be beaten, to be without recourse, and yet to still feel the resonance of that fresh bell. The gilded victory chime that shapes fresh souls even as flowers wilt and flesh fails. That small comfort nested in this bouquet of small comforts, the fault line that split this life separate, distinct from many others. Fed, sheltered, with a warm bed and cool water, alive in this implicit ruin, watching the treasure of potential alight in the distance. Tomorrow coming though it can not ever be, today that artful sustain, the dissolution of happenstance and hope, that residual flavor time leaves lingering in the shop window of memory. In the train window of memory, all our reasons flashing past, along these long, always diminishing tracks.

These traces shine like moonlit rails, like the rows water droplets make upon the window of this unlit kitchen on a night caressed by rain. An aria sung as I am typing, the brief suspense of spell check, and then the song changes. Between what I wait for, and what will be. Between my plans and all the worlds staggering actions. Between the work of want and the trespass of wish, all of this happens. Nearly three weeks out of work, the driver who hit me might not have been insured, the money all but run out, no doctor, no lawyer, no Indian Chief. Just bourbon and music and the magic of letting go. A joyful ringing between the seams of this made up world of all these big tomorrows, the limpid fictions of law and country and finance tasting a little better despite the fact that maybe all of it is going to just miss me. Happy for this sea of strangers’ happiness, hopeful for their hopefulness, awash in these drizzles and aches.

It feels pointless, it feels as if my uselessness has finally come to a head, but something inside me knows I have felt this way before. Besides, there are still things to do. Animals to feed, lines to fill in on forms to fill out. Doctors to see and lawyers to seek, arguments full of latin candor and miserable invective. Books I have yet to read, nights I have yet to curse, fights I have yet to lose. Losing love, losing hope, losing the impulse to even try is not losing everything. It is a grubby, empty, miracle, this life. Fed by brutality and earnestness, and sacrifice-- and we ease the harm of these only by the statistical wisdom of our abhorrent good will. The work surpasses me, just as the urge to work, and the ability to work did years ago. But the work is here, this world, this moment. All the rain and discontent and imaginary tides contingent upon this conceit. That this moment is all there is, and the most must be made from something. This moment is as good as anything else that is or is not. Lined up, shot down, whichever trick takes, whichever hand is held, we play what is dealt. And when our turn comes up, we deal or fold. Whatever turn arises, in whatever game we think we play.

That blue that somehow speaks of haunted bones blinds me, the split blood drunk seething inside my skull flaying my last slip of sanity away. It is the native tongue of each day, graceless and remorseful, lonesome, hungry, and always undone. The belayed days of labor, the waiting for systemic cogs and gears to do their turn, the awful creeping sense that this trap will endure-- too much for my weak, trembling, stupid soul. No drug, no regard, no reserve, no angle. Just too many angels and a lack of gods. All this sky and no heaven.

The fever doesn’t fit me and the headache takes my heart. Through the broken branches a warm wind takes scrapings of a moon. The pavement takes each print, tracing the skies, the pallid winter hexagon, the crushed ashtray hush of the horizon. I feel the needle more in its absence, I feel tomorrow more deeply having been betrayed by yesterday. I lied to the tracings, I lied to the tide. The clock collapses on the cusp of midnight, the day begins, pitch black and solitary. Nested in the needs of so many empty hours.

In that vast expanse between the real and the perceived, the stretch of black bottomless water stills, and that tireless dancer whirls and whirls, burning the surface in a blur of flame and steam. Eyes open, and, alive after all, you smooth the blood from your scalp, staring at your stranger’s hands. Something shifted beneath the firmament, something changed in the springs and gears. One day’s sure tomorrow dissolves into fantasy, into ache and memory. Bruised and beaten down to the trembling bones, your heart sings its death-song, and you stand upon these clouds of dust and vapor. Staring at the ceiling as if it was the sky. Talking to the room as if god would ever listen.

Yes, I was talking to the TV. Yes, some simple shadows made me weep. Eyes drown, watching a moment end. Eyes drown in unfathomable traces of trauma, the stepped on sentience beneath the bruised skull and the stippled musings of shattered auto glass. Poked and prodded, scanned and set aside. Well past midnight and my head is rumbling, no pharmacy open, no car to drive there if it were. The clock edges towards another empty hour. Talking to the television, all the tomorrows I had planned for twisted metal and broken glass.

When the urge overcame me, the desire to commit some act of terrible, enduring beauty, you were nowhere to be found. I caught fire like a prayer of grain alcohol and spray adhesive, like the soul of a flag driven to war. While I burned in unkind rooms and that eternal reach of night, your absence blinded me, blazing away in my mind. It was a theft of reality, a shifting of seemings too profound to weather. So while I flayed page after page with snips and shards of meaning, spelling everything out with that dumb alphabet of hope and heart and feared oblivion, you lingered as a cypher behind each poem and letter. My mouth filled with the sweet stab of remembered kisses, all salt and warmth and sudden endings. When I spoke it was with a throat laden with ghosts and dreams.

The desperation of settled bets and earned hell overwhelms. History becomes fate, urgency need, and all the words bleed into the meaningful pauses between them. Art speaks volumes; failed attempts at art speak more. Such pointless striving, such fearsome spitting, such pointed want: the scale seems balanced towards the side of lack. The furious attempts towards beauty, the moth beaten bulbs of an empty porch. That late arrival that will never come. That letter left unwritten, never sent. Lost children and buried blossoms. The lingering ache of love, once love fades.

It is always midnight and there are never any fireworks. The drift of headlights, the shift of the weather, the vain transcendence of a wandering sky the only details kept. There is a wide silence, scratching at the backs of my eyes, that sense that something bound to me wants out. Holding still, the whispered chill washes over me. Blood flow and all the worn out sentiments of harried capillaries. This blush the latest remainder of the flesh made obsolete at this late hour, in this slow night.

Maybe I will stand out beneath another sprawling sky, irrevocably lost on this thread-bare edge of the Milky Way, watching my breath as it rises and the stars as they fall. Maybe I will write another horoscope from the flavors of all my failings. I might open a bottle, pour another glass of artificial solace, swallowing whatever flame is available. Every shipwreck and cataclysm another pin in the map of this sleeping mythos, the knot and toil of the nearness of the self. I might turn on an old movie and drink myself to sleep, lulled by the clipped voices of fabled shadows. Huddled in old habits, lit blue and still breathing before this broken clock, beneath this crowded night.

The washed out moon and the dry heave tide, the clatter of drowned stones sounding like teeth or sins. The wind rising cold from somewhere across the dark ocean, somewhere over the cold reckless waters it wails. The taste of salt, the taste of nails, the heart cluttered noise of another dusty clock. Memory hides behind the hills, it flickers in the trees.

The granite and iron ore leavings strewn over the train tracks, cumbersome steps taken in the middle of the night. From the cold shore to the dense summit thicket, walking miles and miles, shoes like ghosts, feet old and sore. From the whet stone smile of some unearthly stranger to the boarded up heart of another tomorrow sold, the trail ends only to spit out another fresh stretch. Mouth full of songs someone ought to sing, the solemnity of each breath when taken alone.

The night idles, skies tinseled with whispers of some lost storm as the dull stars almost try to shine, almost try to find the last wishes left alive on the night of some special day. Silence drags its brush through the blinking streets, lit windows and quiet curbs, steel fences and holiday lights. Every shadow holds a spark, every prayer a pyre to guide these greasy dreams towards heaven. The stars fall only to flicker, porches lit only to warn away the dark.

Walk off the last drink, trailing steam and off-hand malice. Walk until the stitches on your heels wear through, and the curbs cling to your wake. Another street, another streetlamp, another car trailing brake lights and pieces of the map you will never know. Your skin chills as the wind rises, howling down through the reach of sleeping trees, biting bones and streaming trash. Huddled in your last call shoes and the staggered step of someone with no where to be, you walk towards those dark cement stairs and the door that sounds like a sound effect. Hands crushed in your pockets, trailing blues and vapors, you wish almost everyone the best. You mumble "Merry Christmas," and this time you mean it.