Once I Opened My Mouth

 

“I am not worthy; I cannot answer you anything, so I will put my hand over my mouth. I spoke one time, but I will not answer again; I even spoke two times, but I will say nothing more.” Job 40:4-5

She

She seized and cut my still beating heart, left me exsanguinating into the resurrection machine. She was the voice of all the repeated, reheated, recycled, rehydrated whispers in the heavy, heaving air. 

She disappeared into the light and shadow, disappeared into the distant police sirens. All of this was her loathing pretense of a loving embrace. 

She exploded on the threshold. She was beyond the door, behind the walls. She was beyond all the crowded machinery, going through other doors to other places.

The Impossible Light of Death

Open this particular wrath 

And open this particular hell

With each proximate breath 

We delay the arrival 

Of the impossible light of death 

Not a sudden destruction 

Maybe not in darkness 

Maybe not today

But unexpected and unannounced 

Even as they are still rejoicing 

Peace and safety and all the good that will follow

Peace and safety and all the good that they promise 

You know enough to know that they lie and they lie 

And will never uphold the law

Peace and safety but they shall not escape

You Called Me Up (a song for Jess)

 Yesterday while I was out delivering the mail, I wrote a song for the second of my ex wives. It’s a country song, apparently. 

The Moon of Endless Failure

 It was a world of competing interests and the ever increasing influence of performative ignorance. This was nothing new. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever did. A world of pretense toward morality and meaning. A world of secret contracts and contracted disease. A world of decaying infrastructure. 

And he hated it. He hated all the strenuous effort required to maintain a measure of daily calm in a world so riven by low men and their rivalries. 

He was tired of public officials and the official public rhetoric. He was tired of their much lauded but never demonstrated love. He was so tired.

As the moon of endless failure rose into the evening sky he knew that they would, given the chance, throw us all into the fires of the furnace for a dollar.