I see it tonight through a scratched lens.  We’re all trying to draw maps without sight, without sharpened graphite.  The mirrors tell nothing.  The chalices are emptied with desperate thirst.  The topography trips us in the dark but we keep on charting it because it’s the only way to move forward.  Everyone’s been too busy tying knots on numb fingers and downing anesthesia to notice that the road is burning and the cartographers are all dead.  Nothing but night trains left, dragging across heavy deserts of livers and bullets left drying at right angles in slow ditches.

The bones we dropped between the rocks weren’t half as necessary as we thought and feed the swelling breasts of circling buzzards thankful for dry marrow or the smoke of life when that’s all they can taste.  We draw lines in the sand like ink across a page, memorizing the welts and shadows like skin that pulls us home, like calligraphy tattoos pointing to the jugular where all bargains are made and broken.

We have no maps to this place.

Our blood is our compass and our conscience is our path.

It’s all we need in the dark.