clean

so very clean



thank you.

sky of deepest blue
ethereal starlight dim
wind is soft and cold

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

I bought myself a kite to fly
I ran through sunny fields
And tried to urge it to the sky
But it skipped at my heels

I leaped and danced for childish years
It never left the ground
I noticed through my childish tears
What's left of it was brown

It was torn in the mud, so it was mangled, it was done
And thus concludes the tragedy of the kite I numbered one.

My second kite was stronger, though.
It caught a mighty gale
my heart flew with it in the yellow
Rainbow sky it sailed

I smiled.  My kite, it seemed to me,
Would always stay as mine
But the sting slipped and I lost my grip
I lost it to the sky

It joined with bubbles and balloons, whatever else is there
In the *****, lonely cloudland in the out-of-picture air.

I still had hope and so I bought
My final silken bird
I told myself that I would soon
Unleash it to the word.

I planned that on a weekend soon  
I’d make it to the field.
The colors all would show again
Just once my schedule cleared

The kite's debut date got pushed back and further back until
It found a final resting place untested in its skill.

I bought myself three kites to fly
The first two meet ill fates
The third one has a dusty shelf
Where it keeps very safe.

nothing about this is true and I know it
A lurking suspicion it's too late to show it
I'm aching and cowering I'm shriveled below it
It's pushing so hard that my brain may implode it's

Time to separate out and address the beast directly
Liars yelling pounding orders trying to direct me
Take a breath to yell back but they've stolen it already
They're coming through the mouthpiece in my head I say instead we

Breathe.  
Don't try to speak
Need oxygen
just breathe
For now