Slender fingers tune my heart strings for the song & dance. Twine the lines of communication that suture this distance between us like telephone wires mend estranged marriages across the bright plains, across endless white pains punctuated by ‘click,’ indelible slips of the tongue. An open book then, the characters engage in explicit dialogue, though the plot is dog-eared, the spine withered away, along with the untended houseplants on the sill. Starved of lamplight & a guiding hand, our pen pal gods whisper nothing much to us in the way of answers but for the fevered, cracked earth words fall down like rain, in cool sheets & low tones. I can smell them from the covered porch, over my cigarettes & the unmistakable smell of dog.
Unsettled hearts. Dust refuses to cling to the glass separating us from our lives past, we never get to look away. Storms circle & thunder at the edge of the Colorado grasslands. Timid sentences still looking for their voice hope to find it among the white clad peaks, the aisles of rubble between. The broken, dirty towns we orbited by scooter, greasy clothes & basement life. I guess it was your rock bottom but thanks for the vacation, for teaching me to dive into desert pools while the highway raged behind the struggling pines & cyclone fencing.
I always compose these songs for the same reasons I guess, Taurus’ are reliable for some things. Bulls to drown & bones to scrye, my stories read like the cracked heels of runners that carry them to distant ears, canyons leading to nowhere, dandelions seeding in a cup of water. So many journeys unmade.
But I hurl my mighty insults, my airy grievances at the clouds along with everyone else. Bruising the sky blue to purple & finally black, ten thousand thousand eyes turn upon us & we see ourselves only, staring back, gazes naked & sharp but under a veil of moonlight to bear us a little less shame, thank heavens.
Rain City Stories 