The single bulb, the window’s breeze, the ashtray cradling the rising smoke. Another measure of this quintessence, another port in the storm, the wind so cold the robe so warm. The wishes picked at so long they turn to wounds, consume the flesh as the mind devours the time, a midden full of wooden nickels and burned out stars. The slow tongue of shadows steeping the embers of the want, this language of darkened corridors and doors torn from their hinges, these words of everyday horrors and common touch divinity. The night creeps on through the undone house, tomorrow’s words traced into the spilling sand. This ash, this mote, this droplet as it falls.
We burn unseen in the thick of night, we blaze unnoticed in the plain of day. This imminent waste of words and wax. Postcards passed between strangers, matches lit against the weight of night, sparks struck from stones and the smolder that you pocket. Lonely rooms and sad souvenirs, coats of dust and smoke. Like the circles paced in zoo animal prisons, like the form imagined before the light saves your skin. The wild reel and the ritual of star and moon and skin. The light in the forest, the beckoning in the night. Huddled in husk and curse, the window waiting open.
It’s not like you can tell the weather by the season. It’s not as if the dew point didn’t turn to frost every day. I don’t want to wake with the sunrise. I never want to face the dawn. But the world is made mostly of who asked yous and keep steppins, whole libraries bent on bossing you around. You can hardly hit a guy with a rock and not get accused of sinning. So I play the hand I’m dealt, I play the tune of the table. I let you toss the coin and call it, my kingdom swathes of smoke and shambles, the bones that break not the bones that roll. The deep sigh of the turning earth, the voice that rides upon the wind. The work of the soil and the star stippled sky, this night simply the saying of your name.
