"birdcall" poems
It's a still morning, quiet and cloudy
the kind of grey day I like best;
they'll be here soon, the little kids first,
creeping up to try and frighten me,
then the tall young men, the slim boy
with the marvellous smile, the dark girl
subtle and secret; and the others,
the parents, my children, my friends —
and I think: these truly are my weather
my grey mornings and my rain at night,
my sparkling afternoons and my birdcall at daylight;
they are my game of hide and seek, my song
that flies from a high window. They are
my dragonflies dancing on silver water.
Without them I cannot move forward, I am
a broken signpost, a train fetched up on
a small siding, a dry voice buzzing in the ears;
for they are also my blunders
and my forgiveness for blundering,
my road to the stars and my seagrass chair
in the sun. They fly where I cannot follow
and I — I am their branch, their tree.
My song is of the generations, it echoes
the old dialogue of the years; it is the tribal
chorus that no one may sing alone.
7.6k
I like slandering your makeshift forceps.
I hammer you down with watery *** and then spill
the remainder on the couch. Yarg! A diamond’s
worth at least a small intestine, and you
are worth whatever’s left over after night
has upended itself, poured sideways out of its
shellacked crawlspace, and turned the basement sour.
There are remnants of you in the park,
some red stain by the baseball field where,
if you’ll remember, you watched little leaguers
build teamwork, and faint splotches on tree bark
from your lactations which, if you’ll remember, happened
every morning. I whisper your godforsaken name
and am slapped in the head. The children cry
when I smile. I cry when the children smile. Good
heavens. I forbid you from not entering my corridor,
even as I set up a barricade. I like my water scalding,
my passion chilled, and I like you in easy-to-
swallow doses. I like you in my eggs.
Ditto the faucet, keyboard, the occasional lily,
but do not mess with my pearls. I mumble of apodictic
meadows while I sleep. What can I say?
I do not mumble of unclogging your bathtub,
which has a certain foul repute, and has grown
heavy and ugly with your hair, which is everywhere,
just as you are everywhere, and wherever, and so
********* hidden it’s not funny anymore, we stopped
looking some millennia ago, after scouring the drainpipes,
kicking down your doors, dissecting your mattress,
speculating about your burial site, etcetera, and even so
we have not been really looking all this time, have we,
just blaring your name through the speakers,
putting wrong numbers on our calling cards, leaving
uncooked meat out on the back porch as if you were
a raccoon, oh, or a lion, which you are not, or not
quite, though, as the books say, you have honey
in your stomach, and if you could but be
ripped open we would taste and see.
May 25, 2010
May 25, 2010 at 8:21 PM UTC
My personal déjà-vu-time memory-prompts that frame
The blurring patterns of today’s hubcap-wheels, spinning
Kaleidoscope flashbacks of bathtub playtime.
A gaggle of giggling girls babbling about
What used to matter : umbrella-popping chewing gum
With gallivanting jargon laced in crushes-hushed : boy-talk.
Pillows : Comforters morphing, swarming like
Womb-entranced, half-cupped palms calmed
Palpitating mouths motoring off self-pitying rumble-grumbles.
How the clopping ball of opted-birr was a bent-mouth birdcall
Over-relished, over-zealous imploration : a round robin
Jumblemix of a jejune bombast for slap-sticked power.
By-and-by polysyllabic buds bloomed, baked, and wrinkled
Past-Gas’s long-gone jokes : those balmy snug-hugs guarding
Doltish vulgarity among the begrimed-glitch and old-grown-boring Jive.
Apr 7, 2011
Apr 7, 2011 at 11:49 PM UTC
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.
My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
2.6k
My personal déjà-vu-time memory-prompts that frame
The blurring patterns of today’s hubcap-wheels, spinning
Kaleidoscope flashbacks of bathtub playtime.
A gaggle of giggling girls babbling about
What used to matter : umbrella-popping chewing gum
With gallivanting jargon laced in crushes-hushed : boy-talk.
Pillows : Comforters morphing, swarming like
Womb-entranced, half-cupped palms calmed
Palpitating mouths motoring off self-pitying rumble-grumbles.
How the clopping ball of opted-birr was a bent-mouth birdcall
Over-relished, over-zealous imploration : a round robin
Jumblemix of a jejune bombast for high-brow, White-men polemics
By-and-by polysyllabic buds bloomed, baked, and wrinkled
Past-Gas’s long-gone jokes : those balmy snug-hugs guarding
Based-vulgarity amongst the begrimed-teeth-sucking and homegrown-Jive.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 3:53 AM UTC
Mom doesn’t like poetry
since it’s not clear like how things should be.
Until you write her one,
and beaming she’ll put it on the fridge with a magnet.
Mom likes things sorted and clean, papers off
the table or in the bin, dishes in the sink or the cupboard.
What is this? Why is this here?
If it’s clutter, it’s just stuff. Don’t save it.
In her room she has 37 years of photos
and sometimes tears up when she thinks of her parents
but she would never admit it.
So, she laughs and means it
when her grandchildren dump the box of toys across the living room
and the dogs slide down the hall past the family photos
and bang open doors after a bouncing ball.
Most of the lines on her face come from laughing, crows’ feet dotting her crinkling eyes.
Her birdcall laugh hangs high above any room
like a day-warbler or a hooting night-owl over the treetops.
So much of her is rocks and earth and order,
but every bit of her speaks of beating wings and blue skies.
Mom’s favorite color is blue, deep like the ocean, bright like the sky.
Don’t tell her blue’s a sad color;
she dressed her baby boy in the ocean and then his sister
when she could fit his hand-me-downs,
and then laughed when the disapproving daycare lady sent her daughter home in pink.
She lives with her husband of 36 years in a light blue house
and relished painting skies on her kitchen and living room walls
after 10 years of white and little time
and laughed again when her children protested at the blue walls, rugs, and curtains.
Time may pass,
and the blue curtains, rugs, and walls may have disappeared
and her children may have had children,
but blue is still her favorite color and her children are still her children,
and she still doesn’t like poetry.
Mar 15, 2017
Mar 15, 2017 at 5:05 PM UTC
I want to wear the ocean
and bring waves everywhere I go.
I want to sleep on the clouds
and wake up sunkissed.
I want to grow leaves
and flowers
and fruits,
and shed magnificently in the fall
and blossom sweetly in the spring
and be ripe and fresh in the summer.
I want to befriend whales
and polarbears
and eagles
and be wild and free.
I want to drink the milky way
and glow from the inside.
I want to powder my face with stars
and take people's breaths away.
I want to dye my hair with rainbow
and never have bad hair days again.
I want a voice that sounds like birdcall
and sea breeze
and rain shower,
and sing without ever needing words.
I want to embrace the Earth
and love it like Mother Nature.
I want to die like the moon
and make way for a bright new day.
Jan 9, 2015
Jan 9, 2015 at 7:54 PM UTC
6 lights have suggested
A birdcall as my will
To dig a tunnel under the stillest night
To echo the autumn, read the book and surrender
I guess the reason has overflown
6 lights show me the naked myths as linear as the thread of the town
I could not question that I wish to be held down before laughing in the rain
Press my love/ a huff for courage/ cleansed up in the trees /I drown until the sense is blurry
6 lights haven’t told the seventh a word
It has left its cordless phone in the room with the view too rough for memory
I can still see the doctor leaping from the bleachers
And the light has found a place to gleam maybe in that idea
Jul 16, 2013
Jul 16, 2013 at 6:48 AM UTC
blood is thrumming in these veins:
to the beat of the sun’s breaths,
to the pulse of echoed birdcall,
to the rhythm of screaming life.
this heartbeat is dripping lava beneath the earth;
these eyes are morning mist draping pines;
these bones are hollow like the first snow;
these fingers are peaks brushing icy clouds;
in the right is held an ocean; the left, the desert sands;
and every inhalation mirrors another’s death.
try and tell me you are indestructible.
try and tell me you are paramount.
try and tell me you are not of the earth –
i dare you.
(these tides will rip you apart.)
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 1:56 PM UTC
Awesome is storm.
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Thick and heavy this afternoon air
projects an
impending doom everywhere.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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Frightening is lightning.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Leaving a film on withering green
it alters
opalesque dew pooled in each leaf.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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Numbing is thunder.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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Wide but blueless the skyscape here
windlessly waits
as large pregnant clouds reappear.
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666666666666666666666666
Then... a
Fear awakes.
World is a-shake.
Mournful is birdcall.
Sudden thunder, decibel-loud
Rumbles, drowns
Voices of scurrying crowd.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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66666666666666666666666
Now I see
A large tree shaking prior to
The strike,
Speed-forked
999999999999999
99999966666669999999
Ice-heat
Lightning
Slashes at
Old spalted
Oak-core.
Strips its
Thick bark,
Groaning
Tree heaves,
Blasted side
Sighs and it
Splits as it
Rips, flying
Leaves slide
Into a heated
Inferno to live
No more, I hear
It in falling to die
Let out a desperate cry.
Awesome is white forked lightning.
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Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 2:38 PM UTC
spring succeeds chill air
old lindens leaf out and bloom
birdcall and tisane
May 12, 2021
May 12, 2021 at 1:21 PM UTC