Wax Lyrical Under the Stars

When the door shut for him he had already written on this side of it that which every artist who also carries through life with him that one same foreknowledge and hatred of death, is hoping to do: I was here

In the AM I know what the treasure holds. An aquarium of inequitable facts. I've been down the road of young lust before, and seen the silk gallery of wise images with loud colours in lunar cycles on my applicable face. Even the sky pities me, the confession of suicide, the last confession, as I'm trying to find the meaning of life. Imprisoned in this plane of existence by walls I can't break, defined by the things I do and the things I say. Reduced to nothing but questions and shapes. I make friends with the clock, it's better that way. Watching time slip away. 

At times I am exalted. Brushing nightjars from cosmic ash trees. Inchoate, always running late. I leave behind a mass of ice and dust, looking further. Beginning to feel like a broken record. Defying the urge to react. I take myself out of the situation when no one knows what's going on in my head and the rain feels like brimstone and fire, and I feel better for doing it, aware of the possible outcomes, as I look back on the day. The increasing heart rate. I grow into different sizes, aposematic when danger is near. I close my eyes and imagine starks singing in flight, short-lived flings, long periods of rain, freckles in the sun. Burnt orange and alive, more so than I ever have been. South-east of Paris, on trains, in twilight zones. Dunes of the afterglow. Located above the breastbone of a fowl, making sudden quick movements. Under the neutral illumination shining on my face. Being born again in stones after sleep. 

The price of living is rising and I'm trying for all the boys lost and not found, for the mothers who have to scream until they're heard, for the children who are ignored when they speak, for her daughter wearing her sparkle. Making the days count, wanting something to show for my effort. I promised I would make it through the night even if it tore the skin from my bones, the flesh from my body. When this day is long forgotten, maybe I will feel a little more justified. Maybe I will see things from your side. Maybe I will look at the stars and wish I had done it differently. Kiss winded. I stoke the orange and fall into embers.

Why does this happen to me? I have stayed up and wondered. With my head in my hands. I try not to be a bad person, when the door creeps open and I am ready to sin, but I've realised there's no simple solution, no cure for the disease. In a drawer full of recipes. Dead letters and icebergs. I smile at strangers, and when people smile back it's like an anaesthetic. Lifeblood. All I could ask for. When the camera flashes and the karaoke ends, the spirits downpour and land in a strange domain. I rarely vouchsafe how I feel, or speak about my problems. I keep my feelings in a bottle shut tightly with a ribbon. In my atelier, in my kingdom of dreams, in a willow tree. I love my sisters, so dewey-eyed with milk teeth. Easily consolidated when my heart is breaking. Shadow-boxing in hunting season. Your words are poetry to my ears, lacerating. Contusions I can't rub away. Midnight ships in thick, sticky fog. Water against the broadside.

The stars at night are coruscating. Terrestrial planets, precious sonograms of the future. Unfurling in the empyrean, chopping wood into logs. Writing succinct messages on bathroom walls in bars, they're farewells on cenotaphs. Wax lyrical under the stars.