Trade Secrets As Currency

Like a mother bringing her newborn to her breast, like an elderly farmer branding his cattle, like a misplaced love note that could have moved one to tears, none of these promises will be kept, and all of these images will fade. Internal forces burrow deeper, caustic statements exhaled as breaths of fire, demented faces laugh as children trip over untied shoelaces. Honey is not coming home to me tonight, or any other night. These random fluctuations, the crucifixion of a saint, inebriated musings of a stuttering child are tugging at the hearts of lonesome heroes. While drained of juices, pushing shopping carts along like lions wrestling summer storms, sons of deadbeat fathers are treading deadly waters. The coastline fades as we walk away, indebted to mariners who have offered cabins aboard rickety vessels charting dangerous currents of distant seas. Persistent gray clouds shroud the smiles of clowns no longer capable of making jokes. Home is a small room: four walls, a porthole that’s always closed, and creaking wood enough to make sleep impossible. Never again it appears will the sun poke through. The barrier of wind, the further north our trail winds, the fewer hours of light. Castles crumble like troubled vagrants. The code is sacred, the laws are fake, the mirror lies, their bellies ache. Powerful machines rest to dream, they are seeing untruths form inside the minds of cautious widows. They know not what they want, only that they have lost somebody dear and refuse to heal. Can a crimson trail down the wrist of a child who has never been kissed attract anything more than flies? The air tastes dirty today, like rotten rinds of discarded fruits, there is no nectar to be weaned from the skin of this world. Saving pennies for a closed door to be opened. The inevitable bribe to end isolation.