It’s not like I run the numbers. It’s not like I know the odds. There’re the habituated states of grace, the mind hitting all the marks, the senses all coloring within the lines. There’s the general presence of time on the go. The wished for seat at the piano bar, the eyes that find you from across the room, and the feeling that you finally got it right. Navigating by the senescence of remembered constellations and the fossils of lost lore, finding the path pretty much where you left it, the longing and the robe by the door. My present tense prewritten and my past in need of notes.
Marvin Pontiac’s voice leaning in the doorway as the songs switch outfits and change scenery, that long walk back before all the days were derelict and all the dreams had drowned. Joe Strummer another ghost in the long corridor I pace each night, a little taste of self and sense, then the abrupt departures. One by one each song is done. The lights grow dim down the way. Again the open window, again the drawl of night. Here I go saying second hand sooth. Here I go sharing the signs someone said they saw. The new moon I would bet on, the rain only if I liked the spread.
Lately my mind mostly wanders. Lately my coffee mostly goes cold in the cup. It’s all this nothing heavy on my mind. It’s all your absence thick in my thoughts. The dogs go off, a thunder cutting low to the ground. Things go bump and the gates rattle and ring. The world takes ten thousand turns and I have yet to roll the dice. My life passed in a flutter wounds and sunsets, butterfly wings and kisses that never ended, plain spoken and ill explained into the final rounds. Nothing but a watcher with words for eyes. Nothing but a hunger shining like bared teeth. Waiting on the weather as the roof falls down.