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the fire

The shine had worn off of the dream of the world, all the heavy fruit rotting on the vine. The gleam of fresh skinned knees so quickly clotted to scabs. The grain aching away on every board and plank. The rusted chains dangling without a swing in sight. The skies turned the color of silty water. The horizon always burning down.

Cold coffee...
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xoxo

You wear all the right rituals, that perfect posture, those secret marks. The mask of passion, the face of faith. That reach towards always craving more. As if you were carved from all the lack and fervor shed from the exhausted efforts of my existence. As if you were always there, waiting in the wings of my idle heart.

There are less evident tricks...
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that final light

If you must remember me, remember me at my worst. Somehow it gained the virtue of certitude, when so much failing came as lack of faith. Somehow it collaborated with your kindness, this weight of wreck and ruin. The wasted days, the broken trust, the long palaver down the road to hell. I would hope that these would mingle with the flavor...
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overdue

The flesh fills with whispers, the light betrays the eyes. The music of creation burns on and on at broader bandwidths. I made it this far by choosing lesser devils. I made it here by reading between every line. It is this ordinary illness, this abandonment of all delight. Midnight nears, and the sickness shines in green wishes and gray dust. Midnight passes, and...
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rote

Gone are the days of rain and windowpanes, sleeping in after staying out, the insistent afternoon sun and the sunday newspaper. Gone is the tooth and touch of life's pull and strut, the bodies inhabited once by these hungry ghosts now gone back to the sea. Hands claps and heels click, the curtain call never lasts forever. The rooms empty, keeping their hands to...
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look

This soul is a thing of stone. This soul is the press of soil, it is the weight of a grave. It bears the rain and the cold, hidden beneath the roots in a forest or sitting in an open field tangled in the weeds. It does not guide the way, it does not part the waters. It is shaped by the gears of...
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smoke trinity

The hush takes on the color of every color extinguished, the bleary burned through gray cold fingers of fog. The sense of smoldering, the scratch of matches finding spark, the dense air leaning in so close. A few distant lights brushing at your flesh, the glint of embers buried in a sea of ash. The atmosphere thickens, like secrets slowing breath. All night...
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thanks

It was bound to happen. The things we said and the things we meant eventually would
intersect. The crossed stars that abide these collisions are never around when the check
arrives. The truth and consequence of the material overrun with the fierce remittance of
the ghost. Words all pile on and on, making mountains and digging deeper holes. The
words gather despite every mouth...
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torpor

The lights go out, save a few sparks crowded by spiders and moths. The air slows all around, each breath pressed tight against the last. It seems like there should be something to say, the moment so swept and furtive. That motion just beyond the silence. This mind not so much still as frozen by a thought that just eludes.

I take the winter...
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finished

It isn't that I can't see it coming. It isn't as if I don't recognize the flag. You wave it until it is in tatters, a flash of color, the sound of rags snapping in the wind. You wave it as if signaling surrender while you spit and fume. I pause a moment as if in reflection. I slow while the words fly away....
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lifetime

I can not say how long I have waited. I was waiting before I even knew what waiting was, eyes cast towards the horizon, gazing at the sky. The day slip by, expanding into weeks and months and years. Decades spent like mad money, spent like the candle left burning or the moon wound down. It could have been mere moments, it could be...
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creationism

The rain spatters the rooftop, the rain kisses the windows. The rain bursts and dwindles and then the day is gone. Nothing left but the odd notation of dirt and water, the bundles of mud and mystery, the worms on the pavement and the birds on the line. Nothing left but light switches and door hinges, a life squandered on knobs and locks. Not...
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