Cleave close to the carbon, the coming salvos are meant to do more than shake rattle and roll. Attend to the poem of self, keep the roots on and in the loop, the clay ever lit with spit and spirit. The magic may flow, the magic may fizzle, you change it up and stay the same. That’s all you from the blue blazes to the...
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So the coiling smoke feathers past my face, head and shoulders hung over the lit ember, weary down to the word. Bones soaked in the oaths of blood and the black grasp of gravity ache unto ignition, ache unto the crush of days feels like destiny, slab after slab of certainty on you from the sky on down. Dizzy from the breath pressed, prayers gone...
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The days exceed,
the days digress,
I am a hole worn through
the world, the turned screw,
the pounded post—
mommy and daddy and the Holy Ghost
as the miracles and infinities
add up the faith and fascination as
I pace out my forlorn portions,
dead reckoned devotions
known by rote and bone.
Prayers pressed against
expired flesh, the kiss
goodbye like coins for
the...
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Here at the long blue end of the afternoon, with the heat bearing its heel down hard, each breath heavy in ache alone , the ghost turns around and around in its tracks all wail and bruise and wound striped bones. Head hung low, elbows fixed upon the knees as the smoke rises, ordinary and inevitable, redeemed through ritual alone. The words follow where the...
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It is the cadence of the common
chorus, the bet within
the spread before us, the courses
we are blessed to receive
the transmission of the feast
beast to belly to the earth of our
burdens laid down. It has been gone
so long that most of our bodies have
replaced down to the atom
these entangled selves
an exchange of kisses
uninhibited by time...
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I am the sound of the engine running, I am the ringing of the room from the lights left on. The hollow hush of the rush of empty through the air, the way the silence is sounded out in the static stippling my skin. This is the body, this is the embodiment, the careless retread pressing through the passage. The inhabitant and the husk left...
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Even the old ways abide
the creed of thermodynamics—
gods and devils forever
scraping the sides, dish and spoon
all the ready runaways,
busting down the doors
bursting through the gates.
So these prayers are set
against the endless stars and
long shot heavens, steam and spark,
breath and spine and expectorate
adding up to atmosphere
counting in thousands from the flash,
mumbled words and...
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This is that moment of warm bright sunlight smack in the kisser, where the heat and glow adorn your flesh with such attendant mention that you feel the shadow pressed from the dead center of your chest, the plaintive tear where the darkness separates your shoulders the way wings would if you gave them any thought. As if the sun sent bullets through this daily...
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From the wilted wish hued blue of the sky spilling over the eaves, from the trees that buck and bow as the wind pontificates, from this slow set gaze of this longest light always reaching for a lost horizon I fall in the moment the song’s let loose. I fall along the ley lines, I fall along the faults, the flattened affect of the undeniable...
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The season settles again on the unseasonable, my bones ring with the resonant chill, something’s always missing after a death. The hard shift to past tense, sifting through the remnants as the days dull the sharps down blunt, the different drummer beating out a rhythm of body shots and heart attack threats as the consequences play catch up. Boxed up belongings and cherished mementos with...
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So it is the scintillance of wind and leaf, abundant boughs swaying in the long last light as the sun sets off and the world falls away. So it is the anticipation of the spill of stars in the bright sky shine between shifting sheaves of greenery and this mottle of light and shadow. The dirty windows, the weary doors. A porch thick with sound...
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You can bring it to the dirt upon my doorstep. You can leave it melting in the rain. So many motions left unopened, so many stations that only the wind will fill. We fall away and the world keeps going. Little by little or all at once we are a diminishing return. Pass it on while you still have it in your hands. Shout about...
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