In My Spiel and Storied Telling

Desiccated mice thus far do gnaw shreds of scant regret. Good and bad love, honey-dew in a salty brew. In my closet, pockets unpack pockets, bags billow under closed eyes, eulogies for the living etched on wet lips and kitchen towels. Owls turn to cry their mournful ‘why’s’, more kitchen towels to mop tear stained flops. One horror story lives on, much chewed over by skeletal moths. Pots of peeled moonlight inhabited creaking lungs, their beams slowing curdling. I still store a few pickled smiles for saucy women. In my book of lies there are half-truths worth more distorting, fields plowed over far too long, fallow earth where the dead are uncovered only to dance again on the graves of the long entrenched. Those drunken gallimaufry of games left unfinished, great works that now slack and dodder, sent unfixed back to the soured whirlpools from which they sprang. Yet here I am, this spark in a potash of smuts a mite of light twinkling its merry pip and squeak, while majestic beings hover to grab up my rash stash of tawdry self; and I say: Yes let them come, and god help these, my patched and paltry wings.