Cloud cover

It’s a morning of clouds
when it’s either the sun
or songs about the sun
that we miss,

Neptune rises with a
scepter full of
unlikely fish,
he’s covered in a net
of promises every song
and lyric of praise
weaved together
to contain his churning ire
in rhymed lines that
limit small talk, ideas,
brings every threat
to happy endings on the upbeat,

Zeus yawns and tosses a
random bit of lightning
to the earth, where it lands
in the center of football game
that fare badly for
all home towns,
both teams are suited up,
seated at card tables in the center of
the arena, helmeted and
stumped and perfectly stymied
over a chess board,
line backers and full battle gear
slapping each other
on the side of the helmet
as fans drool, throw bricks and
paper cups,
take the name of Zeus in vain,
Zeus calling Christ
on a cordless phone
to raise the bet,
Jesus just laughs,
says
“I’m letting that letting
this meter ride to the
hundred dollar mark…”

Gabriel walks across a horizon
on the notes
of Hayden
and Gillespie
whose darting tongues
are triple threats
on the lying lips of lawyers,
mouthpieces all.
Gabriel reaches for
handful of mist,
a fistful of rain,
a knuckle sandwich of
crowded choruses
that horn in on
what clear playing
field his imagination plays on,
there isn’t a score nor
a trace of a lyric law
which can furnish the
vastness of skies at
the edge of the atmosphere,
where music continues
on radio waves though
words and breathless concern
with precision, noted detail,
less nunanced positions
all fall silent, quiet as graves
full of buried language,
where sunshine turns orange
and icy before all becomes
black and it takes years for
our eyes to adjust
before we see something
like stars
or footprints across
what is no longer sky
or air
but only a vastness of nothing at all
where planets sit
appearing not just a little
like balls on an ebony
billiard table,
waiting for collision, some
kind of action,

“I’ll take that shot” says Zeus,
“Sounds fishy to me”
moans Neptune,
“You got my marker”,
says Jesus,
“things are slow in Calgary,
and my c-note is only half spent…”