0
elegance

It is the instrument that fools us, staring first into that bright bottomless pool of blue. The tide changes, dragging patches of cloud and colors we can not quite know. This is the way we sail, each stare aiming at heaven, each sigh capturing the wind. It is a drawling dissolution, that textbook swap of states. Witnessed, we each evaporate. This is all our...
Read More
0
wrecking ball

The stars are always falling, the leaves are turning brown. The sky is clipped and dismembered, that song that will mean so much more once it is forgotten for awhile. Always scratching after memories, always mythologizing that relentless itch. Post cards and poor performance. The dismal ringing of salutary bells, the statuary so humble and fine. The inference is lifted like fingerprints pulled...
Read More
0
Aldebaran

The heat lingers on the skin, long after the lights go down. Ambient fire trapped in atoms glutted with action, the effervescence of these fleeting mutations. Vultures rise on the updraft, measuring the exchange rate in the atmosphere. All the murdered darlings that gather upon the cutting room floor come home to roost. All the better angels, their work wasted as heat and light....
Read More
0
misfit

No matter where you go, there you are-- the t-shirt wisdom read through heat bent air. The flesh lends its dissembling to the whole of the mess. Rivulets trickle down my temples, a deluge between shoulder blades soaking through my shirt. It is always off beat, out of focus. That precious fall, that beautiful mistake. The certainties always waiting on faith to fall through....
Read More
0
contingent

The heat threads its long sharp fingers beneath my flesh, slowly opening all the gates. I plod through the day in a damp daze, my eyes cooking at a low boil, the world all painted on the glass. A day of bellicose air and poor choices, sullen children wanting nothing more than to run wild. A night of long curves and closed lanes and...
Read More
0
last year's model

If I could walk backwards through your dreams-- the cold sweats, the dark of night. If I could step welcome into this fever, this passage fraught with hearts. These are but the least of wishes that sink me, just seeing you. There is a door way and a light bulb. There is the thread of evidence I once was here. A fingerprint...
Read More
0
burn

The flesh is always burning, eyes worn red from seeing too much missed. Midnight and the sun is still weighing in, radiating from this riddled skin. Whether the meat or the bone, somehow the bite is off. Teeth out of order, every choice another hesitation, every thought another slip. Whether the touch or the taste, the senses lose their sense.

The hours curdle, so...
Read More
0
puzzle peace

Here fit the pieces of longing unresolved. The livid skin, the brush work of fingertips, the light that yawns and gapes. The puzzle scattered across the calendar and map, mystery hidden behind the simple act of want. The electric fan, the rhyme scheme of the dust. The hopes that must be abandoned when we act in faith alone.

There is a swathe of...
Read More
0
graceless

The angels of my better nature left, too unnatural to follow the obvious course. The open road closes in, a hunt for hope, a wish for wings. Tail-lights and near misses, the constant bombardment of brutal motion in all this imagined stillness. Lessons are not learned early enough. The truth is out there, waiting at the end of some path, lurking in broad daylight....
Read More
0
poetry trap

If it could begin again, I would find your fingers on the keys. I would feel the pen and the paper, the ease of the ink, the resistance of the writing. I would listen to the sound each letter made, the halting scrape of punctuation. I would rest my hands over yours as you wrote, feel the reasons left unsaid in your every...
Read More
0
childcare

The afternoon took a somber turn, a gray shroud covering the blue blazes, children turning in their skins. The poetry of loss and distance, of the people who should somehow failing, worried hands that will always be a little too empty. Busy work and sickness strung out on wire and doubt. Asking nothing of those who have failed the tests of trust. Asking much...
Read More
0
retrospect

I track your hauntings with wax and candles. I follow your absence with pen ink and lined paper, curving these rough notions around your paces, trying to find a chain that fits. You dissolve, moon bright then closet dark. You linger like a fever then disappear like a promise sworn. I take your measure with tape and rough fingers, I taste your meaning in...
Read More
magpie:
thank you for one of the best comments I have ever read on my MR set smile