The old pine boughs,
Sway, fold, bend,
The sky’s wind tipping them low,
The tips downturned,
In the waving breeze,
But each bough holds,
Against the formidable winds.

When they fold,
The wind tells them to dance,
To sing against the voice of the breeze,
To sway like a flag,
Red white blue,
The colors of an evening sky.

While the boughs refuse to break,
They are just as a prow,
The swerving, pointed-tip of a handsome ship,
Muttering softly against the ocean,
As it carves its way,
Through the deep ocean’s blue-clear-greens.
The pine sits with its old aerial roots,
Its deep nut-brown chest swollen with pride,
Dark green needles catch some air and fly,
Still connected to the old boughs.

The old boughs watch over,
Through the night-morning-noon-evening-night,
Every storm and frost.

The old pine boughs are as great as a grain of sand,
Alone in the deep blue seas,
For no one appreciates that one old pine,
Its boughs each a prow,
For the wind and the rain.

The clouds came down from the sky
They rolled over the hills
And decimated cities,
When the derecho came.

Shoot the bird in the foot
Let the sin drip down your chin
You've downed your prey
And held them at bay.
Now sink your fangs into flesh and blood
And pierce the veins
With their flowing crimson.

The mess before you
Feathers strewn about
Clean and white and dotted with red.
Doesn't their fear astound you
The beating of a heart in their breast
Dark eye does dart around
And nails scratch for any grip.

Don't you tear into them more
And revel at the meal?
The way their screams part from their lips
Like an innocent bird
What have they done to deserve this?

Mortal bones break
Mortal flesh tears
Mortal blood does weep.
Does the crimson not shine in the light
Like an expensive wine in a fantasy's delight?

It's blue inside
Not red.
It's white
Not red.
The flesh falling away from the bone
With phalanges exposed to the cold night air.
I saw it happen,
When you peeled the skin away
The layer of white like that of a peeled apple
being prepared for a pie.

When you pierced the cheek with your sharp white points.
When your lips graced the curve of the neck and suckled until crimson spilled.
The velvety black inside your mouth,
Corrupted with the scarlet red
of fresh blood from the vein in which it came.

Does it not bother you?
When you dismantle your prey as though you are a bird of the night
And them a sleepy songbird wishing for a roost?

Hunger.
It must burden you so
To blink when a heart beats and roars
And to hold back the tempest inside
Lest you expose your most private secret in front of the crowds.
How I wish it does so.
Forever.
May you never feel the joy of taking the lives of them all at once.
May you cower in the darkness
And hide within the deepest shadows
Not because the sunlight burns,
No, because the men will hunt you and make your kind known as they sharpen their wooden spears.
And none of you will be safe again.

Bleed your bird
Drain your victim
They are perhaps helpless alone
But the cluster of many is the terror you shall know, forevermore.

I've got a beat in my head,
A Song in my heart.
It sings like a whistling bird,
And coos like the softest of the dove's
sweet voices,
Alit with prose in a foreign tone.

I've got a beat in my head,
An idea in my heart.
It hammers with a beat all its own
And takes the pen outside my hand,
A true work of art like a flourish of the wrist and a movement of the hips.

I've got a beat in my head,
A fire in my heart.
It burns like a wildfire
Tearing through a forest in the midst of summer.
A burning hot smoke blasting into the air.

I've got a beat in my head,
A drum in my heart.
It makes a sound like a call to war,
A soldier's cry accompanies
The marching of the many boots.

I've got a beat in my head,
A whisper in my heart.
A life of beauty to be lived,
Like the little one's sweet nothings
In the dead of night.

I've got a beat in my head,
And ink in my heart.
A desire to write,
The stories that inspire
The life that we all so fervently chase.

Still eyes did look into the skies,
A mother did weep.

Little hands still cling to her fingers,
A mother did keep.

Still warm, a body did lay,
A father did dig deep.

Little hope did not dwindle,
A father did keep.