Coming Home After Ten Days of Sickness

She came home today with a paper band around her wrist.
The half-moons under her eyes were dark, but her skin had a minty tint to it.
I asked if she’d like some peppermint tea, orange tea with honey, a pill.
No, she said, just a rest.
He helped her to the couch, and for the rest of the day, he, she, and I were quiet.

I’ve seen quiets where the air bubbles, hot, overpowering, and quiets
where the senses seemed damp, gray, full of weight, but I had never seen
a quiet so still.

For six days I only washed two plates at every meal.
We watched one half-hour of television.
We did not go upstairs except to change our clothes.
I wished for rain so I would not have to go outside to water her garden,
and see the wooden house nestled small among the trees, hunched over as if to say
I’m lonely.

I can still hear the haunting sound of Bach upstairs, but none of us
can bear to turn it off.

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Thoughts:  An attempt at something a little emotional.  As you’ve probably seen, most of my poetry is more oriented towards the senses, and this is more for the heart/mind.  I won’t explain it – I find that being told the meaning of something takes away the magic wound between the lines.  I think the only thing I would edit about this is to tie it together a little tighter, because at the moment it’s very disjointed, and re-word some of the lines.  I don’t hate it, though.

thoughts about existing forever

in this house.
with the fawn-colored couch and its fawn-colored hair
that stick to my clothes and ingrain themselves in my socks
and the boards that creak like an old woman
in her sleep
in the nighttime,
when the owls lurk outside and the wasp hive stuck
to my window is quiet.

these girls and these boys with no fingers and no god
who needs god anyway, when we’ve got time travel- we
are the lords of our bodies, but
somehow we always, in the end, at the finish line, end up
handing ourselves over to others
that poke and prod and shrink us to
itty. bitty.prunes.
before expanding us into balloon.s.

but if there was no end, we would stay alone, windows shut
against the cold and the buzzing of the wasps in their stripes
of gold and antimatter – they have good defenses against
the ones who would enslave them – and my socks are pressed
into the crevices in the couch
searching for a warmth that will only come
when the end does.

Metronome and Ouroboros

I.
There’s lace hanging across the trees, and
(It’s in the air, he said.)
black fog creeps in with the sunlight
‘til the golden wheat dripped Midas blood
into the rivers.

Locusts came and took our air,
their wings batting the webs from our throats,
but the spiders stayed and stayed the lungs
from taking in the bird song, (It smells
like rain, he said.)

So skipped along the chartered grass,
with golden means strung through our hair,
but as the green gave out to gray the grit
of blood ran through our toes, and I saw woody butterflies
(I see white, he said.)

II.
The corner of the house was painted moss.
It clung to my fingers as I rounded, toes outstretched
to reach for hallow ground, and the trees bent in,
stuttered their breaths with a sound of drums,
measured all like metronomes.

In the far-off fields, Ouroboros beat his head
against a rock in madness.  His eyes frothed pink.
The ground shook my knees.  Through his chest,
ivory pierced the overlay of yellow skin, an arrow
tipped with bluish black and poppy ribbons.

(I feel pity, he said.)

III.
Ouroboros, don’t you know
to stay yourself within the earth, writhe only
in the heated seas?  What water
have you come from?  Ah, the river, it runs with
gold.

IV.
He called for cigarettes.  I can feel another heartbeat
against my bosom.  Maybe the butterflies
have come to seek shelter
from this thunder-wrath.
Maybe tomorrow Ouroboros will be a myth again.  Oh,
mud, cease your knocking of my legs,
and help me to my feet.

For Sparrow

Oh Sparrow, with grain clinging to the soft edges of your wings,
how is it that you stare so wide-eyed at tree bark, with your beak a-
singing to the worms in the knot holes, as they squish around their lazy pink sundays-
how is it that you tempt yourself with young ones to catch the coasting
wind lines under your feathers and soar so high that even man wished to follow
you, but, how is it you return to your bed of sticks and love the fuzz-tuff darlings
in their casing?
Oh Sparrow, had I been born your sister, if the twisted whorls of life had somehow
brought my consciousness to yours in a kaleidoscope of blue-toothed id, I would have stolen
your wings just to fly twice as high.  My breath might have left me and taken to gravity’s heed,
but not I, for I would reach up with my soggy beak to skim the clouds and race the planes
and cry for all the baby birds who would never see a sight as this.
Oh Sparrow, do not ruffle your sides at me, for I mean no harm in telling you
of my disloyalties, of my irreversible brain-harm, and there would be no way for me to take
your brown wings to this body.  But, Sparrow, if I could only speak to you, I would say
all the dreams I have of space and sparrow-feathers, and maybe you would cock your head
for a piece of bread in my palm, and maybe you would hear the chords of my voice
in your song-time, and maybe you would look at the air with a new set of eyes, my eyes,
and take to the oceans in the skies with a new pair of wings, and maybe I would feel you soaring,
Sparrow.

Title Song

A boy blazing on the cobblestones, a-click-clack.
An old pancake hat is snatched by the fingers of a dying
tree, reaching out to the corners of the earth, winding its way through
pillars and lovers’ beds and ivy boughs dusted with
ash.
There’s a woman with a broken ankle on the side of the road
in the shadow of a butcher, his cleaver wiped on his fat stomach
that glistens with passion (erotic) for his lady-dove.  The woman
has sprouted wings from between the rips in her bodice,
on the wrong side of her chest, on the decay of her marriage

and no one can claim the boy’s body.
Patriarchy collapses and the remnants of the female bones
become heirlooms in attic rooms, snowing ash
in airwaves the flit to and fro in a sky that’s turned red and drips
slowly in pools
feeding birds
burning boys under bridges.