Fluttering in the wind lives the ribbon
Fluttering in the woods out of the corner of my eye
Sometimes through the trees I glimpse the ribbon
Distilling all the sunbeams, praying to the sky.
If it’s on a young tree, perhaps it’s from construction
But I suspect an old tree marks the ribbon’s timeless lie
Placed in rituals long ago to remove the dark obstruction
That sequesters the divine beyond the reach of human eye.
Sometimes when I’m looking down with glasses set beside me
I see the ribbon acrobatting in the trees nearby
The only way it has such freedom is its knotting to the treeside
If I set the ribbon free, it would descend to earth and die.
The only way it’s animated – writhing, reaching, dancing,
Is the wind invisibly surrounding it, to steer it
Sometimes I wonder if the ribbon’s measured prancing
Is describing the condition of my immortal spirit.
The pigeon sat awkwardly crushing its tail
its wings dangling like grey canvas sails
It had been hit by a car.
I carried it home in my hands
Everyone stared.
“the rats of the air”
I fed it bread and water
Put it in a large open cardboard box by the window so it could see the sunlight
It sat in its own poop, paralyzed in stink
I cleaned it so carefully in the bathroom sink
It drank so thirstily
And then died, flailing suddenly in fright
Three days later despite
Everything I tried.
What makes it worth it to try to save a life?
Did I just prolong its suffering?
Or did I give it a more peaceful exit?
I cried
I cried for the pigeon.
I have sketched your skin
Etched you, stretched you in
My arms in the air sprinting under the blazing sun, by the white house, the lighthouse
A white salted dress, a red ribbon, hair sprinkled with sun-scorch
A salty kiss for you; you etched waiting on the porch
Hair permanently ruffled, lighthouse permanently quaint
Seagull cries permanently muffled in the flight of oily paint
But I can still hear them shriek, through all of the years
As I paint you in with the salt from my tears.
the sunlight slips between the branches to hit the dirt
makes the new grass shine like golden hairs in patches.
if I stepped on those angled blades, would it hurt?
would my feet leak from redly burning scratches?
or would the sunlit grass melt between my toes
and suction me to always wander where it grows?
Love is the leaves clinging the trees and the trees cradling the leaves.
One harvests minerals, laps up the earth, the other soaks light from the sky;
trading and talking, in springtime and fall, coming and going to die.
They nourish and parasitize each other, generous thieves who reply:
“We the leaves reincarnate the /trees/ reincarnate the leaves thereby”
The mantras swim and barely respond
to the limbs and hands that invade their pond
“Be the change you want to see in the world,” more laps
cramped up laps, collect the birch fluid, boil it, everyone claps
“May all beings be happy,” for you have made syrup out of saps
The hands track to touch – they remove the protective slime from leathery wings
Does it irritate the mantras?
“Accomplisher of the sublime,” the caged fish sings
The rays
The beams
Their wings
On a cold morning with a halo of ice crusting the edge of the panes
And ribbons of fog extending outward like roots or veins
I press my fork through the cakes so they give way
Drowned in syrup like the coins at the bottom of the bay
I think of the mantras swimming in circles; creatures of divinity
For unlike me, they live, respire, and know
the meaning of infinity
As babies we were held skin to skin
(Perhaps why the feeling is so distantly familiar
Like the tune of a music box you heard as a child
Like simple words sung at night
Like the sound of a voice through a tin can on a wire
Like the sound of the birds in your hometown)
It is a transfusion of sunlight
It is better than a campfire
It is the feeling of being a lamp-lit drifting dust mote on
A breeze
You carry the weight of the earth
But have the translucency and lightness of a photon
The ant has latched on to my ankle bone
Pincers like the universe
Developing venom
The ants
I’ve always been tune averse, too nervous
But this venomous music has caught me alone
And I have to dance.
Blood spilt beneath the hospital bed
Tracked by clogs across the floor
Blinding lights bleeding panicked voices
Statue mute helpless overlooking
“Someone take the twins.” The uterus
She screams when they push the medicine.
He cries when the cancer lung
Twelve family around the dead body frozen nameless
No family only nurse with HIV+ when she succumbed.
“11:15 AM” the nurse he said declaring the dead.
Why do I feel like prey?
Pray.
Intersections with those powerful claiming power
With those hungry claiming ignorance.
All the organs of the body laid before me
I am either a god or an imposter.
Sleepless nights
Seeing my family with a liter of blood beneath
Hearing all screams echo in my
Hearing all
Hearing
Draining
Drowning
2 liters of blood on the floor adrenaline. Stop.
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