Notes to a Testament

I told them I would dance on graves only if the weather was right & if the rain was light enough & slid down my arms like honey. This is a not pastime for the frivolous, those "ill at ease" with the sound of such steps, the travesty of such rhythms as the auburns slacken on the hillside. Empty tombs upon which I dance which reverberate to the side-step, the Newport skip, the shreds of a mazurka remembered from childhood days when the family maid rolled through a few numbers on the Wurlitzer in the living room as the lace curtains billowed & Mother was in bed, nursing the fever that accompanied her soul like a shadow in each of its debilitated permutations. Hollow as the music of this earth. When the dirt beneath your shoes clouds in the headlights fanning out over the nameless graves, the lanky grass, the path that leads to the gated white house. Sing
the music of this earth, nervous son, as the rain beautiful beyond any memory bounces off the stones.

At play, the night

I think I can remember the rules of the game. I just don't remember how those rules are carried out. Who declares the winner? Whether I should sacrifice myself rather than accept defeat? What the symbols mean on the board? How this porcelain sword is supposed to move across the black & green squares? I can pretend like I remember. Answer to no one. Continue with my cracked shield until sacrifice is the most advantageous option & no victor, now matter how felicitous his spirit, shall witness my dissolution.

The rules are never remembered. They become elements of a fantasy no one dares call into question.

Strong Odds

Colleagues gather to play poker each Thursday night in the basement of a bar. Their haggard, expressionless faces hunched over in the smoke. But even a novice observer can sense the anxiety welling up in their eyes. The sudden scratching of the shoulder. Fingers rolling on the table's edge. After all, each man but one will lose almost the entirety of his week's earnings. Each man but one will stumble home, imagining scenarios of revenge and redemption. Every week, the same man takes home their wages. 7 years of playing and not one game has slipped through his fingers. He sits at the table with a wide grin during the entire game. The same grin no matter the status of his hand or the confidence projected by the others. He never folds. And even when he's lost all but a few dollars, his smile remains, and he stays in until the game is his again. The others have grown to accept the inevitability of losing, and yet they begin each game with the same crude jokes, the same excited gestures as if the outcome is and will always remain undecided.

Two Hallucinations

With the sickness, the hallucinations returned. Blackbirds swooped soundlessly onto the naked branches of a tree, held crooked postures against the singed clouds, the spools of twilight reeling. Opened their beaks, bearing worms, twigs, other mouths. I could be heard speaking to myself. Called out the names of the sacrosanct and the damned. Listed, as always, the benefits that conspire against the willing soul. As the fever swelled, the birds disappeared & bats collected beneath the branches, swinging from invisible claws, red pools glistening beneath their lids which momentarily opened. Light shuddered across the horizon, but they didn't budge, nor would they until this sickness passed.

redemption is another drug

Snow buried what remained of last night's fireworks. Then melted, coursed down the streets in muddy ripples. It's been longer than you can remember since you had a night that you couldn't remember. Why you wake up missing your jacket and smelling of vomit in an apartment overlooking a rutted field, rows of abandoned buildings. What the unseen sun hasn't thawed. On the street of Invalids. In a city rearing up for apocalypse.