The tree limbs rattle against the wood framed windows.
Wind, warping it’s cries
cascading them around the foundation and frame of the building.
Sky, in shades of blackness and fog, overcast brushstrokes fade out along the fuzzed ring of a lone, distant light. Life outside a frosted fish bulb.
Electricity fails, shadows twist and gel in shapes furnished by the gentle sway of candle lights.
Everything waits
as the wind laughs,
in an otherwise still space.
For now.
The saw warbles as it inquires about the age of trees.
Whistling while it works
Merriment
In the motion
Repetition
as a source of transcendence
as a source of Oblivion.
Doing their part
To accumulate all of the numbers in the universe,
cramming them into a dirt-caked, mostly empty light beer bottle. A film of spit and disappointment lining the bottle’s bottom.
Long since worth finishing.
Cram it full of what might as well be infinite.
Try to seal the bottle and throw it
end over end
Into the limitless flotsam and jetsam of the ocean
Bobbing its head until it descends
to join shells
dreams that have shriveled and sank
Next to the skeletal remains
of some leviathan who once
was the man on these streets
Let the numbers leak out
try to count their number
a guessing game
as the tide rises
as the saw catches on the wood.
Alive and uncertain.
Hear the symphony rise and fall and rise and fall and wait for the curtain before you commence
Applauding.
You Dream at night
And those Dreams are like sitcom television
you have a predictable pattern and a laugh track
A loop of Dreams
Driving/Lost Wanderings
Airports/A lost passport
The alternate paths of life/Lonely ministrations to the soul
Deep fear/pure suspense
The wailing/Siren song of misery of a life not lived well
Spreading its warmth through your vocal chords with a luxurious disdain
a longing to be removed from
flame and pitchforks and the general screeching sounds of metal/
Meeting the axe with hands in supplication
seeing which one will be the first to give in to the demands of the other.
Some lament
Warbling out of me in bird song
As the wind starts to settle itself
and the Sun is shifting its angle-
Contorting in slow, diagonal positions-
A gentle descent.
My Notes held at length,
Letting the sound do the lord’s work.
My grief in the pleasant murmurings of the later afternoon.
Throwing passing swipes at the still branches of the trees
Swirling around the crowns of long shadows
Trillings stir from my crumpled frame’s rasping song box,
Pushing notes
Into existence
Becoming a melody
Pitched into the air and echoing back from the other mournful aviaries,
Sobbed into music,
clipping the stillness
as the sun says it’s goodbye
and the song becomes a symphony
in the darkness.
I nourish the malcontent by eating a spoonful of rotten prunes each morning
while the television yells in my living room’s general direction.
I’ve been hiding all of the ill will in a dank, clammy basement with a mud floor.
Letting it outside on overcast evenings where the moon is a faint ring that whirrs, fading, aged fluorescent crescent. An aura around a darkened circle. Sterile road leading into town, lined with streetlights hinting at their own fuzz of light.
Before the crisp air can wake up its senses, I cram it back into the dark corner. Kick it. Use coarse words.
I turn on my car’s AM radio and feel it between the voices, crawling out of a far away canyon mixed with an auditory haze. Played through a mute. Buzzing with rage a size too small. A little deeper, into the well I threw a rock into last week but I’m still waiting for it to hit the water. For the satisfying rush of the surface tension breaking.
I am starting to worry.
If the well has gone dry, where will we end our thirst?
The prunes writhe inside me.
Stretching their clenched fists and slamming into my vital organs.
The television and the radio swell their chests up.
Make their voices blend in the sound of appliances left to run on the highest setting. Wail for relief.
I am waiting for the well-maintained shoe to drop.
Waiting to hear the sound to tell me what to do next.
So much of me is ready to finally Let loose.
Own it.
Now.
let the rest
Take care of itself,
the circle meet its end
of it’s own volition,
the age old questions
passed from our scholar fathers and their scholar fathers remain unanswered-untouched and unblemished by the ravages of brainwork,
a rock falling down a chute forged in the shape of the rock,
smooth,
made for the moment and her indeterminate visitation,
despite the distance traveled,
coming and going,
unchanged.
If silence were golden
You’d be chipping your tooth on fool’s gold
then spitting your fillings into the collection plate again.
Caught doing it for the fourth time
this fiscal quarter.
A real blunder, this one.
The improprieties pile up on one another-leaning precarious, struggling to see over the edge, locked in a mothball-ridden closet.
Molding with the passage of time-
Still vintage.
If vintage were the wheels, catching fire from heated, seized calipers, the entire contraption falling off and rolling into the glamorous lake, the pride of our little slice of heaven.
And I’ll sit by and let the torn rubber and the chemical smell of spurned brakes choke out the fish in the water, seep into the drinking supply.
revenge-a measure of it-
Finally.
From a distant star
The flashbulb burning itself
into the collective’s
knowing oblivion.
A blip and blop and click and sputter.
Morse in uneven distribution
of light’s focus.
Slipping into an inkwell.
Returning unblemished
Dipping again
Into an unknown.
Slept well
and
Shaken awake
At the whims of
Some unseen
dark-hearted puppeteer.
I’m a show pony
Rambling with incoherence and sweat and a directionless
chattering of my lips and teeth
slapping together
with the delirium of wisdom in a tighter space than
really should be allowed right about now
they’ll strap on my feedbag
and send me out to the pasture
to put a pistol square on my forehead
and fire this bullet of confetti back into my brain
where I’ll dream of the range
before I was taken to be paraded
in front of the masses
shuffling and showing my gums
to check my value
against the barcode and the blue book
page
the one with the picture of me
smiling with a dead man’s grin
hugging the fence for dear life
and being so much more than they bargained for when they put the down payment on me slapped a harness on my back and corralled me with a whip and a chair to usher me out to the dusty trail
All of the day
All day
Each
Moment
I am absorbed
In the clinking sound of the glass
Touching against my face
As I scream against the window
Full tilt. Belly on fire.
Even the water
Only fuels the
Flames
In their search
For whatever remains
inside me.
Shake off the dew, vibrations hanging on the edges of the row of flowers. Sharp thorns running up the stem, something brittle-wooden. Uncanny in the ability to draw blood from incidental contact. Transgressions of passing.
Thorns squall around me. A Stretching color game from hell. Leaving my limbs with little purchase in their airspace. They wail in acknowledgement, unaccustomed to being denied this entitlement.
Dug straight in from inside a well-hidden space, obscured by worn rock wall. My sullen form jitters-anticipation left to spoil.
The thorns collapse down, smelling the thrill of the hunt. I do my merit best to compress and contort away from their fall pattern. The edge of the raised, sharp-thornteeth.
New scratches and nominal droppings of blood smeared around my own edges, blots forming from my core outward. Constellations to color my form. A snarl denoting a victory across my face. I am made something uncommon. A new sense of whole. Known, smoothed out in the rush of emotion. A survivor, sipping the last few drops from the flowers. Thirst, trying to be quenched.
Again
