Distant Signals

Exhale into the summer heat deep, quite, pianos hum and the lamps burn on in every direction

the photogenic scene that stiffened the lip and crawls in tone that slides in like a slick glove into the

evening.

Bitter coffee chases, another and another and rain catches mug side on a windows sill; engines

soothe and sizzle then sleep.

Shadows fleet in harmonic poses they are chased one by one into afternoon streets a mob day indeed

their family, friends and arch enemies. Legs covered by sheets the tea kettle smiles and the ugliest scenes

hearts tied with bows that glitter like snow face lifted mornings that perches in shower anthems that stomp from

head to cars. Mumbled words, blushed and firm plumb tinted faces cozy in the corner snuggled inbetween days

captured on screen savers that pixel out into dust. Chasing down hallways that will never be lived in, and in beds that

have never been slept in or purchased or manufactured, these are people that have never met and will never know

each other on a thursday afternoon or arms locked in a movie or in the sound of sleep. There are wedding vows never

written never said and just linger on the lips 13yr old kids fresh home from a day where they too may have heard of

us tugging at the wind.

When I was a boy I fell nose over tail into a certain thing that fleets through the hands of melted plastic and

baby lungs that never learned to sing. Callousness is a noose that never relinquish it's embrace and slowly

does a carpenters hand peel the rusty skin like a fresh picked onion in July crisp as dust escapes and eyes

open wide. Broken bread laid out and wine for a feast that flows from hills in rivers that is all for keeps; former

unstitches and the rotten air begs for peace and inhales the firm taste warm air, and lays down and piques the deepest edge of

true. Smooth skin glistens in a dots and freckles that clings to shine a deep smile that ingests the light in droves.

Houses crash down foundations rupture and cable boxes uproot like alcohol IV tubes into the night, the daydreams

abrupt come true and the next season cancelled mid plot. Homemade fist fights shake hands and frolic into the corner

stores and rob the joy from each others hearts, and sleeves roll up as skeletons receive the proper burial remembered

for a moment ashes that scatter and forgotten for a lifetime. Funeral for a friend who never really was a friend but

someone who knew a guy who knows someone that reflects a face on a city bus. Lucid in stride, nausea, and

the children that were never born remain in pictures never taken on a mantle that was never ours, as the dead bury

their dead so does the memory died at sea. A metal box sheds the last raw recordings of the wave that never crested.

In summer skies, ocean rain, in days of calamity hands gold have written in them

our names.