What a difference a definition can make
What a cake, what a day, what a beautiful bride
Picture don’t last forever and memories are always being refigured
And so the light falls on the walkway just so
And so falls an entire way of life on a particular day
Or maybe it’s a million airborne interlopers.
No room for parachutes here and no room for prayer.
Nothing for rent, nothing to borrow, and still, sea-levels rising everywhere.
What to order when one is facing down the end?
Not to fear, the world doesn’t end, they say,
But we certainly do.
And again the backup singers queuing for auditions.
And look at all of Nashville holding its breath.
If we can’t finally slip these strings, all is lost.
When the moon mists, let’s say
Or when you’re steering into the groove of a hard turn
And there are stiller truths waiting for you.
What is bad? What must rise?
I fall asleep before the visitors arrive
Again and again I’m myself all over again.
How would you have it? Whole-hearted but also quick
All the days in a pile, all the nights on a string.
It’s the sea that begets mist, begets fog, begets centuries-old sentinels.
And you, laughing in the face of any silence.
But you’re saving the best jokes for Permanence
Because all our lives are braided into the End of the World.
Every decision made as the plates shift beneath our feet
And spaces already impossibly far to cross are only getting farther.
Is there still life to be lived in six?
The problem in what goes back goes forth
As empty clubs lead us to lonely singers.
Italian would surely drift in at this point
If not earlier, if not the time of day
When the sun is slanting and the canals are aging
If not the weight of this life or its habits
Or the asymmetrical beneath all these symptoms.
It is the Great Uneven that brings me here
Again and again brings me to you
Leaving equations and details and derivative behind
Because before every road there was a path and before every path there was dust.
You have boots and I have boots, and we have the sun.
We’ll keep making sense just long enough.
A collection of birds
Keen on adventure
Imperfect mornings, clouds, considerations
Impossible motes in very real eyes
It’s something magnetic this Sunday
Peacetime artillery would require peace
But there is cake and ice cream this time
The sun’s daily retreat, no less fantastic
Carving patterns and byways and that which will be
Let more air in
Welcome restraint
Admit resting, admit error, admit joy
Skywriting my passwords over the crowded beaches of crowded seaside towns
While we huddle around the last fire on earth and make funny faces
When we circle the clouds and here we are, safe
Or open one eye after another onto a new day
The sky, a door, a season, a safe
And the intentional way we put our palms to the table
Next, participating and/or breaking bread and/or outright celebration
We’re cycling through all the times of day, here
We’re doing our best with what we’ve been dealt, here
We’re caring for the elderly around the clock, here
We’re making potatoes and making it, both
Don’t bother me with this static, it’s raining
I’m a up to my ears, but will it ever be enough?
What will we be left holding whenh the bell rings?
And so the calls for a little bit softer now
As the real begets the real-real at the end of all things
At every turnstile of every subway
And all the points packed tight we call it educational
The Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta, the Babylonians, and the first guy to build a fence
Various clergy, restaurants, and battlefields
If we could can this air
If we could bottle this coffee
If we could slide into the right boat on the right night with just the right drinks in our belly
The nights we dance, the nights we hold onto
We’ve forgotten enough interesting people to field an army
We’ve smashed idols and we’ve crushed dreams
Swollen moments, several sunsets, and you’ve got all manner of livestock
That’s how it began and that’s how it will continue
A pair of pants, some good shoes, and
You’ve got it from here
He tells us about Kid Chaos and the end of time
This is in Japan, Present Day, give or take
It’s a thing about breathing and marks and spaces
He wraps them around his finger
You’re keeping everyone company
And there is that way people spin tops in older movies
How big galaxies are and how they measure them
So much heat and dust
A house and all its corners
We, one, they, all another day
Another handful of abstractions
Another discovery under the same sun
Always learning to pour forth and pour and pour and pour some more
That’s the click of a TV from the time when TVs clicked
The wood finish of a fine wood cabinet
The decades-long marriage of tubes and sound
And there we go with warmth again
There we go with evenings and evening comforts
Before the notes we’ll never finish and all that darkness
We built fences
Even while we looked for a way out
And and and and and
Another night with roman candles
Or wrapped in lonelier smoke
Gather the world around you
Skirts, sea-level, trace elements
A bag that’s a tube that risks being another fence
Somewhere someone is painting a silo
And somewhere else a silo is refusing to be painted
This is a rainy day vs. a hearty stew
This is the space between vs. the space in all things
This is all things like livestock and repetition and forgotten rules
There is a braid that brings us together, those that’ll make it and those that won’t
These flowers in my arms, this oxygen in my eyes
The gas we’ll save when we get there
I’m sorry I didn’t call, I fell down the steps
Background radiation in the 50s
High definition photography, 4K even
The sunset as the sun sets later and later throughout Spring
A little hop off the last step as you’re on your way
Locking the front door when you’re closing up the bar
Remembering what you forgot 10 miles into a roadtrip
An important message in a code that hasn’t been broken
Defense making the best offense after all these years
The quiet last days of a national hero
Building a fire and wondering if this is the last good cold day for a while
