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No One Ever Said a Murder Ballad was Anything but Haunting photo


but that's all about to change. My murder ballads, well, they prefer to terrify. I want to talk more about titular heroes. About what it means to kiss a goose. I mean, kill a goose. I want to do something on the internet that people will talk about tomorrow. Will talk about well into January. Every day, I wear a t-shirt that says, YOU, because my clothes say a lot about me. So, time. It's 8:00. It's evening again. It's always evening now, and that doesn't seem fair. Seems uneven actually. Like a poet's delight in words. If we here in Texas have anything to learn from Beyonce, it's that tasteful and beautiful are rarely talking about the same thing. About the same crows lined up outside our mirroed windows pecking at the beaks of birds pecking at their beaks. About the day I realized it actually does take saying angel 113 times for me to believe in angels again. About how these crows and those angels should be the centerpiece of every nativity scene. Of every time we think to pray. Gravitas. Gravamen. The Gravel Chickweed. Galveston, O Galveston, I am shuffling through the felled leaves of a gingko tree feeling my own self fade from yellow to red to brown to a growing excitement for springtime. I want to emerge from the gleam of the Gulf of Mexico at sunrise so you can know what it looks like for a man to choose your arms over heaven. For a man to trail so much sparkle, we can redefine Manifest Destiny. Why no one would want you to climb a water tower is beyond me. Beyond me is a ladder awaiting. Awaiting us is the lit sprawl of a city at Christmastime. When the light hits the ice, it twinkles and glistens. When the light hits my face I learn the importance of rolling with the punches. Heat haze, also called heat shimmer, refers to the inferior mirage experienced when viewing objects through a layer of heated air. What I'm getting at is, I never know what I'm looking at anymore. I woke up this morning and hugged my dog because I was cold and you were in New York. What I'm getting at is still undefined, but becoming frequent in its usage. Merlot drips down a bottle only to stain a countertop, only to leave a little lavender halo on an otherwise forgotten Tuesday. O, it's heaven, we say. O, really, we say. There are things I refuse to call clouds even when their physical properties are pretty much clouds. Like an airplane. What I'm getting at is, I'm much too afraid of being struck down where I stand to believe I'm in any way above the clouds. 

 

 

image: Carabella Sands


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