zetetic

Dusk:
A dying sky of
Slashed pastel-lacerations.

Art can be so careless...

I imagine I'm at sea
And the burnt sky
Defines the
Darkness:
Ink blue, and
Black grey

Against fire -
All red and ochre.

I want for so little -
I just want you:
A slice of beauty
To light up
The darkness.

Liquid

Everything's liquid,
Everything's changed.
I'm painted in oils,
In blacks, blues and grey.

And in this grey city, on these grey days,
pressed up against the stench of turpentine,
I'm washed away.

In three short breaths I've become nothing -
borne away.

Only now could it come to this.

It's not so bad.

Jack

(Jack Daniels, all
Rich and mud brown)
Two wars and Jack later -

You're looking tired. . .

S'
Hum me the old tunes,
All brass and swing!
(yes. . .

brass an' swing. . .)

I did it my way!

Yeah,
you did it your way.

Two wars and Jack later
And we've got nothing for you.
Not even hope.

Like a child you said to me:

I'm afraid of the dark again.

(For a man understands
It's the last thing we see.)

How these years have piled up. Once monumental, architectural, huge vistas of blue skies and lazy hot summers, now compacted by time into tiny, meagre increments; now slow and hard-pressed into long grey sediment; my greying skin, doubled and folded over; a landslide of time rolling down into the lines of my forehead.

I look in the mirror. Remembering: a simple act of archaeology.

Nestled and ground within the troughs of age, memories lie like ley lines winding beneath the present. All time and matter is buried into the continuous present of my aging, each decade pushing through a new geography; this aging land that sets and resets, that slowly becomes more firm and fast, that has lived all it must and been all that it has had to be, is slowly and inevitably coming to rest.

I look in the mirror and somewhere I am lost.