"unwinged" poems
I am the broken wing,
The unsong unsung,
That the sky waits for,
In patient days untold,
The words unspoken
From the muted wren,
I am the shy seabird,
Unwinged, let, lamed,
Damaged by heavens,
Indifferent to earthlings,
When I saw lovely you,
Lone on purple heaths,
A bittern was mourning,
In the marshes within,
Me, my drowned heart,
Muffled in blasted wind.
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 12:59 AM UTC
They will soon be down
To one, but he still will be
For a little while still will be stopping
The flakes in the air with a look,
Surrounding himself with the silence
Of whitening snarls. Let him eat
The last red meal of the condemned
To extinction, tearing the guts
From an elk. Yet that is not enough
For me. I would have him eat
The heart, and from it, have an idea
Stream into his gnarling head
That he no longer has a thing
To lose, and so can walk
Out into the open, in the full
Pale of the sub-Arctic sun
Where a single spruce tree is dying
Higher and higher. Let him climb it
With all his meanness and strength.
Lord, we have come to the end
Of this kind of vision of heaven,
As the sky breaks open
Its fans around him and shimmers
And into its northern gates he rises
Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel
With an elk’s horned heart in his stomach
Looking straight into the eternal
Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all
My way: at the top of that tree I place
The New World’s last eagle
Hunched in mangy feathers giving
Up on the theory of flight.
Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate
To the death in the rotten branches,
Let the tree sway and burst into flame
And mingle them, crackling with feathers,
In crownfire. Let something come
Of it something gigantic legendary
Rise beyond reason over hills
Of ice screaming that it cannot die,
That it has come back, this time
On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:
That it will hover, made purely of northern
Lights, at dusk and fall
On men building roads: will perch
On the moose’s horn like a falcon
Riding into battle into holy war against
Screaming railroad crews: will pull
Whole traplines like fibres from the snow
In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.
But, small, filthy, unwinged,
You will soon be crouching
Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion
Of being the last, but none of how much
Your unnoticed going will mean:
How much the timid poem needs
The mindless explosion of your rage,
The glutton’s internal fire the elk’s
Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,
The pact of the “blind swallowing
Thing,” with himself, to eat
The world, and not to be driven off it
Until it is gone, even if it takes
Forever. I take you as you are
And make of you what I will,
Skunk-bear, carcajoy, bloodthirsty
Non-survivor.
Lord, let me die but not die
Out.
May 17, 2014
May 17, 2014 at 7:08 AM UTC
Too soon, she became a human,
climbing perilously
(unwinged)
to kiss the sky,
to see waves roll over oceans
(she would tame a tiger with
her mortal fingers)
inside, she knew that it would take
magic, not love
to save her
Feb 20, 2014
Feb 20, 2014 at 1:55 PM UTC
There are no lights after sunsets
no small talks, no masquerades,
no wavy lights pretending,
no hazy smokes, no darkness.
everything circling reality.
with echoing laughter at night
once slaughtered sights of sleep
undressed the veil, unveiling horns
I was walking in the dark to deep
-there I lost my wings, and fell
for once, we are one in the dark
in memories too soon forgotten
no vivid sights, but echoes
to the heart or to the soul
inside our small earth, enveloping
the night, once innocent
with the dawning of every soul
once a place of redemption
now with fire burning beatings
of hearts unwinged uncoiled.
and our laughters kept going
like a duet of curses in the air,
a song of the world, of reality
of the unweaving of the soul
once masked, now true.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 3:45 AM UTC