The hours of exposition pass, and the hours of introspection are put on hold, swallowing every dying tide. Cobwebs and spotted mirrors, the sounds of fans and trains. Tequila burning in the belly, branches scratching at the window, the overcast sky full of ominous light. The most recent wounds won’t stop mouthing off, and the shower seems a million miles away. The moon took to the street once too often, and it has been disappeared from the heavens, no one left to post its bail. The starving spider in the corner scribbles away in web and wonder, waiting for succor and respite. Write me off, count me out, the bottle offers all the council I will keep. Like the moon, like a bad penny, I come back again and again.
The music wanders bar to bar, clipped and stretched along the bones of the rhythm, sliding out of sight and into memory as it dances through warm blood. The wind’s let loose, lapping at the rooftops, shaking all the trees. The clouds part long enough to feature the glimmers of Jupiter and Mars. We work and shirk and lift our masks to reveal the bitter in every breath. Fiction has long since overtook the facts, like the Secret only writ large and even dumber. All the bad guys haves badges or a judge in their pockets. Real people are piñatas and purses to pluck while the gods and devils run amok. Every kiss is ruined before the lips are split and the teeth scattered around the gutters.
I don’t drink deep enough anymore to match all my weeping. I don’t cry enough anymore to catch a glimpse and shake it off. I carry a couple of torches, I tender resignations and peerless flames. The gods play the long game and the devils know their business. Bruised from the latest fall, fresh hells met daily as I lose another step. The words forget their affiliations and every oath goes wrong. From cold reads to slapsticks, the punchlines land wrong, and the crowd work never goes my way. Forget the footwork, the fates have spoken. Everyday shall go astray, each mistake will visit as the bell sounds through the night, Marley’s ghost dragging its dirty chains through the heart’s haunted halls. The longhouse raided by Grendel’s mad hunger and naked rage as the world gone mad kills the heroes we would have believed ourselves to be. Ashes and dust, dusk to dusk. Every dawn again done in by waking, every hour uphill all the way.