Approaching December 31st and a mind casts for meaning. It's been practicing now, reciting, in secret, all year, every year, for something. Something without a sense of being a thing, but rather a fracture of something. A moment perhaps. Good moments, sad moments, are mere moments, not indicators of the future. Nothing to count on.

A mind facing the meaningless magnificence of a new year.

Soon it will be the end of the year. Time will fold in half at the distant horizon and disappear. The past feeding into the horizon like paper through a shredder.

Feelings well up over time. What is missing feels surer than what is not. For years you try to link the dots and now you just think, let them be dots. Round and round they go, each one a world. Reclaiming yourself, you learn when to hope and learn when not to.

From the depths of red dust, the unflappable moon carves it's place into the sky. The red sun sets as a sea of bright faces swallow the world whole, just for the night, making no claim to the hallowed earth. Holding it. It's memories in orbit.

Names pile up year after year of the people I have known. What once was definite now seems empty on the outside, empty on the inside, now living somewhere on the edge of space where music begins.

I Hammer hard on the doors of sleep and beg to get in. I dream of sailing into the moons light where logic suddenly becomes a mere ghost. Plunging headfirst into a blanket where a voice, meant to be my own, delivers a message from the past, built of smoke.

In this land of no sleep all thoughts sink below reach. Laughter falls like tears; memories come together like a transit map, the framework of the past, the present, and the future.

Death to the wind. No time to lose. An explosion of colours, the ground wild with jewels. The moon limps away in a stained sky, trees flutter, all dressed to kill.

A disappearance encourages love. Intolerable thoughts, thieves in the night, this side of life. Old as a scorpion, the world gone belly up. I watched it sail away into the night sky and return with a new name.

There you are, gone and the same. Today the white flag isn't high enough. Building is the weapon of choice. The thinking behind it prevents us from ending. Hoist up the moon and watch the big fresh face in the sky thaw it out at night.

Why do you and your memory make a habitat together? The vast space between the floors, the distant space between the years screaming in freedom to leave. Screaming in freedom to stay. The questioning of love is not to condemn it. It's to see through all the smoke, to let your fears sail away into the night sky letting your soul thaw out.

Ok. How to do this? Where's the manual? She calls, you pick up the phone in the kitchen, she picks up the phone upstairs, she says, Sorry I can't make it. You march up the stairs and say; what's this about? The room turns black. The stairs back to the kitchen turn to water, each stair a wave breaking over your feet, you don't remember arriving.

The kitchen has changed. Suddenly the walls are too white and the faces in the photos watch as she says everything you don’t want to hear. You watch the pieces of life as you know it fall away. You talk. You don't talk. She talks. There is a semblance of dignity in her explanation. There is knowledge of tragedy in your acceptance. Is there life after deception? You start walking on the Moroccan rugs, placing one foot in front of the other like a drunk test. You keep doing this. You are leering for your new life. You try to embrace the idea of freedom -- you think. You tell yourself you never owned her and now there is relief in the concretizing of your worst fear. You think. So many worst fears are coming to life lately. You keep saying to yourself; what next?

This afternoon composed itself long, long ago. Who do you think you are? There on the beach, light sits like a pool. Above it the dark bottom of clouds hang on a slice of gray-blue sky. A thousand white birds speed into view and zigzag away over the shore. Who are you to think that you deserve more than this? She leaves in the car. You have responsibilities. You want to stay healthy but you forgot to eat dinner and your eyes keep locking onto nothing. What next? You walk out of the empty room. Nothing stays the same, but nothing ever gave you the idea that this wouldn't happen. Life as you knew it had moments of joy and hope and you know how to wait for them again.

Withdrawal

Mostly, when someone dies you feel left out, as if you were not worthy of knowing all. The weight of unanswered questions nearly buries you alive. Family members are mere markers, testimonials to old tales. You finally get up and walk out.

Outside, light falls on your face, skin plum, as if nothing happened, as if you had not just experienced the deepest confrontation with eternity. Enormous emptiness fills your mouth. You tell your arms and legs to continue.

Then, when you are completely seduced by the safety of your flesh, a flash of violence takes everything you have gathered. Your hands rush to your face, your eyes wide. You begin to die too.

Nights Go By

Lately it seems as if my heartbeat has been replaced by new memories that feel like anniversaries of older ones. A temporary suicide of choice, in a set moment of not knowing the difference between arrival and departure.

What I saw yesterday does not mean I will see it again tomorrow.

So curled up into a ball at 3am, my thoughts float above me as I scribe into an empty space in-between. I feel stuck in someone else's circumstance, in an arbitrary kingdom where walls contour around me; all exits leading to rejection.

There's no room to languish though. As I scratch around for meaning, things speak for themselves. They want to change their forms and be something else. We don't end with our skin either. We end up in these things we make.

Forever Falling

I am repelling myself from evil, from a person in a position of sheer domination over another. A father raping his daughter; self glorification at the expense of degrading another person’s spirit because they are selfish; selfish at the expense of this other person.

Now my thoughs are throwing themselves around like discarded clothing in my head. Cleaning up, I pick up a few and take some notes, but the rest, strewn about in an empty room disappear when I turn on the lamp. Sometimes the very word I need to say, the very word I need to see goes dark.

So I'm on my knees in a dark room, my hands on the floor scurrying around attempting to find something that was never there in the first place.

Now I can hardly see you any more.

You stay, you go. You will be someone who I remember as always sounding the hunting horn at the wrong time.

You catch your plane as my body folds forward like a suitcase locking in all the pain.

At the edge of a flickering white light, at the edge of an altered state of mind a crowd stands in awe, a crowd of restless and pre fueled protagonists; fueled by moods. Fueled by a festive mood. Fueled by a celebratory mood. Fueled by a mood to do hurt. Fueled by a mood to grab, tear and fuck. Fueled by artificial moods. They stand in awe.

Like a cinematic quick cut she stands alone in an empty parking lot; her arm out to the world; her hand open to the sky. Tears falling like autumn leaves from above with her outstretched arms wanting to catch all the gifts that rain down; gifts that extinguish every last flame from her distant past.

Fast-forward to an image of blonde Venus. Blonde insomnia. Blonde temptation. Staggering home on a cold winter's night into the fragile arms of naive seduction. Exotic beauty intertwined in ruffled bed sheets. An empty wine bottle lying beside a crumpled pair of jeans; the bedroom floor littered with the mementos of past acquaintances.

A wine glass, a cork opener and a lingering scent. A grown child stands in a corridor, starring at partially collected cardboard boxes, in a world waiting to be reclaimed, wondering if his chain of thoughts will ever collate a flickering white light, a cinematic quick cut, and an image of blonde Venus.