Tagged: the Birds
Ophelia
always interrupt me for
animals or ghosts
food-related reasons
bathroom
a sound you
hear the car making
my exit
a song on the radio in
need of lifting
or a heavy thing
land upon
my head
wake me up with tears
if I am cold
slipped like petals
on the sheets
like grief
drawn by a fly
or a bird
hiding its hurt
stop me at the edge
if I get too close
hold my body in
point me towards
the beginning
and set me down
Yell Fuck at Canoe Rental
geese scream hate
over a banjo being played
inside a trailer full
of life-jackets
the geese are so angry
they lose themselves
feathers in disarray off them
dropping two at a time
soon there will be
more feathers on
the ground
than on the birds themselves
you could build a new bird
imagine the feathers cleaned
and colored for crafts
kids attaching them
to their shoes, banjo music
lifting them into the sky
where light is adjacent colors
the music plays on speaker
it will never stop
but eventually the geese do
they scream their necks
into collapse, then
disperse, like light
onto the blacktop
squirming
the light is the same light
as always. we’ve had it
this whole time. it has been
everything since and will be
everything else
it extends beyond the prism
of our atmosphere. it comes from
a fucking star – how can there
be hate?
it is only the brain making
of light what it will
the brain which has never felt
the feeling of light on its skin
Meds
i am asked to pass candles over a fence to a party
i light them first, which I guess makes the whole thing harder
looking back it seems strange
each candle seems desperate, a plea to other nights
the flame a small bird struggling with huge weight
overstimulant with nice things
buried in woman’s hair, the air all at once
i know they are small, my hands
but small things eat things
they consume slugs as dolphins
people who understand, might understand
i see the world in the eyes of everyone else
or do i just see it that way
is near death a symptom, or the start of a remedy
should I stop now, or just go with it?
Voyager 1
baby birds cry
to expose the red insides
of their mouths
so that the parents
can deliver food
any sound they make
is just screaming
it attracts possums
raccoons
we sing, we scream
in both joy & anger
we certainly cry – in
everything we say
we are saying
Here I am
Come get me
like baby birds
preferring the company
of whatever’s out there
to nothing
Grief Later
What’s the turn around? Will this
be like when I was 4 and didn’t cry
at Nana’s funeral, because
she smelled funny, because
she brushed my hair too hard
in a hammock once? I was 4
I remember things as if through
that hammock, my face pressed
into ropes like the blueprint of a face
I can’t remember what I’ve lied
about, or what is a story. Was it even
me who saved the chicken heads
because their beaks still moved?
Where would I have put them? If I went
back to the house on Rogge Lane, to
the adjoining back yards, would there
be a knot hole, a cinder block shelf
rowed with chicken heads?
Are they still in my pocket? Or
are we completely mistaken by grief?
Kidnapped. I wonder…
can it be considered a good life
if when you die, even for a second,
someone hopes you haven’t?
Roy G.
In the same vein
hands are laced
of lovers walking
runners erect
their running stances
filling with air
like animals do
to avoid
being eaten
I am guilty of this
and pulling away my dog
from his interests
something about today
though. I am
in touch
a hand has drawn the sun
a little closer,
cracking it
like an egg
over
the water
I let my dog stop
and sniff
whatever he wants
we gaze upon a duck
at the edge
of the spillway
I will be a new man
when I have forgotten
this day
and can read on it again
its fishing men
beneath
like ants in a sink
twitching in the spray
of a silver faucet
they won’t catch much
most of the fish
are sent downstream
through a bypass
in the dam. Shall we
go to the end today?
where heron stand
aloft in
their jubilant arches
piercing
their faces
on the water
Overslept
//The early bird catches tape worm
//The early bird catches her mother and father
eagerly awaiting separate packages
//The early bird catches the worm’s understudy, Gregory
face down in a puddle behind the theater. No one can find Worm
Show is 2 days away
//The Early Bird is the first known organism to appear with feathers
It must have flown solely from attempts to shake them off
We Were Here
An injured hawk circles the circumference
of its tether, resting occasionally on a glove
attached to the fence. Clouds gallop over
mountains, shedding their snow like loose summer hair
I’ve seen no people between Moab and New Mexico
Just the signs of people. There’s a town called
Many Farms where TB medication was tested in the 50s
Several hand-written signs for Xbox repair
A stray dog at the Conoco eating what remains
of a sandwich. The school sits half-excavated
from the rock. You or I take pictures from the car
I wonder where the people are, and if a land
so unforgiving is ever asked
Hermit Crab on the Woodpecker
Poor old woodpecker tried
the telephone pole. Forty-thousand
calls, dropped into the sea
Of all the things the humans say
how much of them
have been said forever?
I am hungry. I am thirsty
I am crawling inside
something else to sleep
I can’t come to the phone right now
I am staying behind
on my own
to fidget with the mammoth carcass
Maybe its bladder
can be made into a bladder!
It’s your night to cook
Where are the hand attachments?
The forks, the knives, the spears
Why do hands make
such inadequate weapons
that we should have to
consider what we hold
before killing, before pulling off
the side of the road?
How long have words
been a part of the head?
Slanted lights
in black water, used
for tricking smaller fish
into listening, into
getting uncomfortably close
Bright Spots
the girl at the bus stop
I barely saw, like water colors
the girl in the face
of the automobile, the peripheral
firefly, the wax candy melting
the girl in the shop window
at Hooters, setting up tables in
what looks like my girlfriend’s
dad’s sweater. the snoconistas
who work until November
dipping their nails in the syrup
and hanging them out of the truck
like rare flavors. the girl
with the tatted arm sleeves
squirting her dogs with water
on the stoop of the mini-golf course
Peter Pan in those tight shorts
looming over everything
the girl who knows her birds
whose mouth is like a bird’s
having evolved on an island
for something so specific
the heron’s shallow stabbing
instrument. the pelican’s scoop
tasting of salt. the girl
at the office, who simply has
to stand in front of something
to make it better
The window’s tint
the blue, how blue
is the grass
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