It’s the season where faith wakes up and sees its shadow, where the reasons are all by rote and the words serve to justify anything that’s indefensible, whatever is said is what is seen. I leave a trail of vapor and litter, smudging up the surfaces, gumming up the works. I am sin and missed syntax, the labor left to language to explain away. The...
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So this is how it all ends, not with a bang but with a whistle. You know how to whistle don’t you? Well, I tell you one thing, you won’t get there by banging stuff around. Put your lips togetherness blow? Sure, if you got the embouchure down. Otherwise, it’s a raspberry and a spit take, Bacall. There’s just so much time left on the...
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It’s the numbers where they get you, the assembly that is accounted for, the company intended to count you out. I burn a little something to make my breathing harder, I drink the dose of poison paternally preferred. Occasionally I’ll do some remembering meriting the memory, honor the absence I was born into. The dead man’s craft that holds tight the rafters, the remains left...
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The sun wanders towards the west
hunkering down below the horizon,
the world replete in silhouette and
wing, crows calling out quitting time
while the sky switches skins, smoke
curling in the myth of mapping the wind.
The din of the uncut day spent in weed
whackers and traffic, home another name
seeking harbor in our loosened parlance,
these eyes opened wide to
the blindness,...
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I couldn’t say what I miss the most, now that missing is mostly all I am. The failures of the flesh, the drift of the dream. The expenditures of lips to lick and rocks to kick, the drag and drift of smoke and sky as the coyotes and stars close in. Currently my hands are gloves and my fingers largely unfeeling, beneath a standing count...
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What more could we want from the world? A road or two to hobble on down and a whole sky there for the scraping, a place to put all your labels and plenty of art to fight about. It’s the sweet spot that we miss, the moment where desire and intention sync up the DJ’s selection within the happenstance. The song that lands upon the...
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You like to think of it like lessons, only they’re the ones that never stick. You’d like to think that you know enough to know better, or at least enough to know when to brace for the blow. You hate to be the sort for burst bubbles, but you’re not the sort to keep it to white whales. It’s all rockets red glare and blossoms...
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You wake within your summoned skin, a sting of blue a slash of white, and the sky on high spinning in circles chasing its tail. You say your prayers, hands high above your head, assuming that the projectile will adhere to the intention of its maker. You make your shapes, you turn the dial, more and more to feel a little less. The burn is...
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I suppose I could go from ache to ache striving down the line, like Santa’s reindeer or Snow White’s dwarfs, listing all the parts that ended up in pieces or begrudging every moment from birth on downhill. I guess it could be the sound of rain flooding the gutters and soaking the roofs, the only talk on the television, the only music stuck in my...
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So what of the run on night? What of the rasp and curl of a smoke cured throat? These stories that I never get right, these dreams that never come true? A life cudgeled black and blue, bouncing bumbles and sudden stars. A burning root left untended like a runaway wish. Everyone loves an ashtray fire, the only light left to guide my staggered traverse....
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