Gazing at a gibbous moon and rising like a lead balloon, exhausting every star and relishing the distance, no matter how far, wishing you were here and I was there, so far gone, so far so good, gone for good. You seek answers to non-existent questions, as if the wind or sun or sky hold secrets other than their beauty and reality. Why ask questions when bright facts, like air, are there for all eternity? Piercing this external shell of skin and flesh is just a matter of testing what is fresh and pure. Feel that prick and watch that rising fleck of blood, so serene as it wells from an inner life. There it is: the world's rim, right there, where sky and sea and shoreline meet and debate the future. A window's glare forces my eye its way but it's all a sad fraud, merely reflecting the rampant sun as its dips to its well-earned bed. Watching the horizon, waiting for twilight, the light turning winking waves into plunging mermaids while wild birds peep and prattle in the trees as if disputing the need for night. Your kiss, so fragile, so fleeting, haunts and fools my reason yet means more than history and the ever expanding universe. So kiss me again, just a touch, just a whisper. Nothing more matters. Please kiss me but don't tell me I must map the future when the past is still so vivid, so strong that every scent and sound and hidden glimpse hammers home our mortality? Love and lust go hand in glove but bones stripped bare of flesh make a mockery of science and genius seems vapid. You say I should make plans and plot my outcome but the mess in which you dwell reflects the mess within my head. I care not for the future; it will have its way. But to briefly rest upon your unmade bed is all that I desire, any time, any day. Bygones are not bygones but by God I will not - cannot - change. A blank canvas is easily defaced. A blot, a spit, a streak of paint or blood fakes choices where no choice exists. Grab your dripping brush or pen or blade and curse the fucking world and that corrupt circus we label life. Cut as deep as you dare and paint or ink will gout. Don't give me Leonard Coen or Gilliam's Brothers Grimm, the poetry of breathing is all I need to dream. Down, down I go to places no-one else will ever know, so fascinating that all I can do to make sense of it all is to open my skin again and again. Make no mistake or take the consequences; make of it what you willingly decide. I care not for the future, the past is bad enough. So spare me your clumsy redemption, ashes to ashes suits me. Smoke mirrors my memory, true or false, but scars abide. The sun never lets me down, even as it sinks. I love your love despite the tick-tocking clock and the flickering embers; life is canker, as you very well know, rancid from the start. There is no choice, no deep, deep heart of the matter, no art to justify this cesspool in which we wade. Born into death we thrash and fret and make our mark, a scratch upon a dark cavern wall, with no idea if its love or lava or blood at all. Go ahead; cast a line and watch it sink. Watch the sun. Take a drink. Slowly, slowly fades the sun, fades the senses, fades the future. Yes, there is a word called Love in a world called dog-eat-dog but dogs in love and dreadful worlds abound so why not hack off a limb or two? What's the point? Here's the point: an edge so fine it shivers. Cut to the chase, commemorate the detritus, despite struggling memory and frightened courage. So here I sit, sunlight winking in the branches, birds darting all around, a stinging blade dancing along my skin, a story told in welling cuneiform. I think of then and now and later and shrug away the world's excesses.The sword is mightier than the pen. All weapons fail in this war of reason against instinct. Etch as deep as you dare; fabricate a future that makes sense. A future, a past, a here and now, a daily dose of misunderstanding as the house burns down. All is well. All is done. All is one. All. Is. You decide.
