these birds nest out of your ribs
like heart worn on your limbs

looking game
lock picking
scrapped

from compassion for birds.

like a bird
he cut off my wings
the cage is open but my heart it stings
i’m now his puppet
******* by strings
burying me alive
rubble weighing me down  
my heads under water so i will drown
i have no choice for he wears the crown

Writing things down
Feels like
Plucking hummingbirds
From inside my head
And holding them
In the palms of my hands
In front of me
So that I can
Eye them
Microscopically
Then
Let them go
And finally
Finally
Exhale

She sits and stands, dances and spins.
Laughs a bit and then cries the saddest tear,
no fear in her eyes, a puzzle unsolvable.
And she knows she is capable of anything,
she can do magic and pull any string.
Sometimes a bit empty, in her thoughts she would sit,
every bit of her skin hot and wet, on the edge of the world.
Her glance deceives without you knowing,
her eyes going far while she disappears
to some other loves, never fully happy
curiously lost, those dark and wild things...
and she can stare at clouds for hours,
at rain, black bird's wings...
And then she slips out my hands,
once strong and now weak as spiderweb.
And she sings, what is life but a dream, deception?
Then I admire her, and want her for myself
to hold on to her for another moment.
And as the sunset watches us, I know
I am the one being left without her, alone.
As she seduces, as she chants and sings,
she is my maiden, my God, the black bird's wings.

Sing morning bird,
         Sing
Same song from yesterday
          Yet
Still you sing it beautifully



*#RandomPoets

I sleep with my window open.
My room is cold and sometimes damp with rain,
The condensation like a tear on my cheek.
I curl beneath my quilt,
As small as I once was,
And let the darkness flood me, as it often does.

It's a strange kind of pain, that night,
One I can't help but admire.
And when that inky sky drips in through my open window,
sleep snatches me first.

A time passes.
It is cool when my eyes open,
Decorated with black snowflakes that lie upon my eyelashes.
The sun has begun her own descent,
The sky foreshadowing of her coming.
It is then,
When I'm bruised and shivering,
That the birds still sing.
And I listen to them for hours.

A black bird sits on my windowsill.

Mocking me with its unlaboured loyalty to the present moment.

I wonder if it remembers all the valleys it flew over, all the food it pecked on.

I yearn to know all the birds it must have known.

What it felt like to feel the wind under its wings for the first time?

Does it remember?

A black bird stands behind the windowsill.

Mocked and dawned with the task of laboured living.

Its Way...

nature has an assignment to wake up the seasons
seasons have their own special way this should be performed
birds chirping and singing in tune with the sun rising
annual blooming of the desert cactus and flowers
melting of the snow in higher elevations
water gaining speed down rivers and streams
waters that will fill lakes, ponds, and reservoirs
trees are regaining leaves and providing shade for the ground below
all in the name of life succession
nature has its way...

Brian Hill - 2020 # 114

To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem. Keywords/Tags: Georg Trakl, translation, German, Elis, blackbird, black forest, birds, brow, blood, grapes, monk, body, dew, stars