Sometimes an instrument, sometimes an obstacle, I take shape late and give up easy. The sun has too much gumption; I let the typo have its way: I hit my bumps and potholes at speed. I blow a tire, I break an axle, I drag these chains throwing sparks. It’s the show that goes on, the proof of life gone to seed, the spectacle after the look away. It’s there— right there! But I can’t reach it. It’s there, and at most I am a ghost. The remainder of so much meat and miserable. The enduring afterthought.

The days pass fast, but the ghost goes slow. The carcass littered with curses and flashing lights, all manner of foreboding warnings and prophecies rotting within. I mix my carcinogens, I read my fortune in bones and gutters, the world pulling away with its lights off kicking gravel. I worked out my worth in words, and it wasn’t a figure I wanted to find. The flesh is weak, but the spirit goes first, the soul another joke on me. I smoke the latest charity, my body keening for redemption. Another flight I’m not fancy enough for.

There’s a point past bounce back, the energy finally insufficient to overcome the inertia. The local ache of bone and being clear in their testament, while the devastation of abstraction and expired intimacy dither in their poignant protests, their common complaint that green eyed devil me. Outsider and obstruction, incomplete in astonishing detail, an affliction to exile and shun. This long lonesome in decrepitude and constant grumbling, the earth alone to hold. A want for words on repeat as decades turned to dust.