The driving rain, the open grave, the sadness is there, the abiding weight of a spike. I've lost her, all that's left is sodden earth, mud and stone and memories. A heap of flowers severed, clinging to life on wet wood. I found my hat yet it wasn't what I thought, if anything it showed me everything not.
And isn't that always the way? Of course it is. People, problems, hopes and dreams, they seem to swirl around a center of gravity so confusing, a god that both loves and hates, and thus forsaken it falls to one to define a reason or drown in the riptide.
Still got a few up a shredded sleeve, though I've been worn down by a lifetime. More often than not in these latter days I'm confused, the shimmer once a sharpness something of a mallet, the weight of it revealed in the morning mirror, the vampire gaze, racing thoughts and lack of ways. That's okay though, really, you shouldn't fake fineness in the presence of decay, pretend that a battleship lousy with rust and silent guns is not a wreck. I made my choices, signed my name, and now that the crows of consequence have roosted dark and racous in the metaphorical rafters of my mind I should not be surprised.
There's still time, I know, yet pushing forty the march of fifths goes on, and the disintegration of logic and faith continues apace. My most recent arch mistake is nothing if not a showcase of this, and places firmly into the glaring light of sense how out of touch I've become considering the greater woes of the world, while I sit here whining and contemplating my own unraveling and strangers more worthy suffer and die in incomprehensible ways.
So the sky, gray as granite, full of rain and shrouding the sun, putting to death both the simple pleasure of warmth upon the face and the grace of looking at a shadow, long as it might grow, and the privilege to ask why. I said five hundred a night, and here they are don't you know, for the last key to this existence I have is the talent I almost forgot.
It's not atonement persay, rather an acknowledgement of the way lightning moves across the sky, a tribute to how life labored for eons to merely see this world, even if it will never be understood. Maybe that's overdramatic, a phantom in an opera sort of observation, the ivory of the hidden and the sequin of red velvet, but wtf I'm drunk and I have carte blanche to make a total fool of myself.