It’s something about the smoke, the slow unshaping of each breath. It’s something about the aperture never quite adjusted right. The light softly washing over skins and surfaces, the dark paying little heed. Another shift from hip to shoulder, another balancing of bads. I burn down here in the toss and turn, sleepless and astir. Another day like any other, staring at the ceiling. Another...
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You separate the ashes from the embers. You sweep the shadows from side to side. The little room, the tiny light, the low growl from behind the wall. Moth wings and the accumulated crane flies battering the bare porch bulb. Time is a hanging tangle, taken for the weather and the cobwebs clinging to the eaves. Time is a fraying knot, the bind and the...
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The day weighs down upon the body, the stretch from stone to star. The time hones the old bones, brittle blade ever sharper, waning to want and direction. The wind dives and soars, the night advances spilling from the half shell sky, brushing up against the flesh whispering intimate wishes and prophecies of your imminent death. The eyes sigh as the light gives way, shadows...
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It comes down to the differences, the map in mind versus the map in hand, where you put your you when you aren’t here. It comes down to the numbers that comes slopping out your mouth. You say the prayers that suit you, you ring around the rosies. You spend your starlight on weighted constellations, your stories the dancing shadows tossed from the crackling fire...
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The heart waits by the open window. The heart is an unfurnished room. Ashes on the nightstand, smoke idling towards the lonely lamp. The hands shift from foot to foot, uneasy with the devil’s work. The songs skimmed straight from the streaming, electricity busy in wires and in bulbs. Art and the unseen tiger, cosmic calendars and hand mixed metaphors, cobwebs dust and ash. Always...
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The sun burns on despite the gathered clouds and the angle of the incline. We orbit and we spin and act like we did something. We hurl these words like joke shop smoke bombs for cover as we flee. Our hurts and hungers flung wildly around us, trade in blame by the say so, as we fall frame by frame. Here to move the matter...
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It’s the sort of sunset that gets the bones to mumbling. It’s the sort of twilight that unhinges the jaws of the heart. Who knows who’s listening, who knows what’ll finally be enough to choke on? The day goes from show to tell, the uncanny and the ne’er do well slowly assemble their infernal internals, they take their trade in specie and in flesh. The...
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Teach me unhobbled heavens how to spend these unleashed evenings. Tell me all knowers how to fill my emptied cup. The nightmares can’t find my dreams so they share my bed, staring at the ceiling, asking “whatcha thinking?” Every swallow seems full of smoke and holes. I miss the ashtray, I smudge my glasses, I spit and fume and profane any name that comes out...
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It’s not that my robes are ragged, I am clad in rags. My cup is empty, my branch burns in tatters, pulled close by the deep lean into shadow. It’s a cold moment, old bones bared to the teeth of twilight, the crows calling from the antecedents of dusk. Watching the last touch of sunlight graze the cheek of a neighbor’s house, crow wings in...
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It’s the sound of ice cream trucks amid the birdsong and traffic. It’s the glittering of insect wings as the sun tangles with the power lines as it sets. The cigar smoke swirls and rises, dancing on the rush of wind. The cigar smolders between index and middle fingertip, the bite of fire, the persistent ember. The sun blinds in rays and regions, a radiant...
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