Thirteen Myna Birds

2013-02-16T17:35:02.754-08:00

25.

SUDDEN STRANGENESS

It’s a feeling like the ripple
the wind makes across the lake
whose shore-trail I am strolling.
Something has joined me on my walk.

Like a pregnant woman,
I feel as if I do everything for two,
each step forward,
every swing of my arms
or turn of the head
to look at something
in the trees or sky.

But this is not something
I’ve given birth to.
In its own way, it’s given birth to me.
“See that in the brush,” it says.
“The eyes, dark and evil.
And look, on the far shore,
a young girl in a white linen dress,
the ghost of Marie, the child,
who drowned a hundred years ago.”

I don’t always have this company.
In fact, I yearn for it
more often than
it surprisingly enjoins with me.

But without it,
there’s nothing peering from that brush.
Without it,
Marie’s not dead.
How could she be?
She never lived.

~John Grey~

24.

IN A STRANGE TOWN

the trees grab at you
like drunks in a dive bar

and the pretty lake
that tourists photograph,

turns into the one
that strangers drown in

birds? they don’t sing anymore.
they flip into bats,
ugly little bastards
flapping through the rot

the nice folks - the ones
who wave at you in daylight –
they snarl now

where do you sleep
in a place such as this?

even the motel’s
teeth are showing

~John Grey~

*

23.

THE SUN AT WORK

In a field of corpses,
the sun has little to do.
Why warm flesh
that is forever cold.
Why shine light on eyes
that will never see again.
But the sun does
crank up the temperature
to speed the rotting,
the disintegration.
For Old Sol is an iconoclast
in his modest way.
In case the unwitting
should seek out fresh air,
he brings a great stench
to fruition.

~John Grey~

22.

Whiskey

My parents were having a party at our house. I walked in--I was nine years old--my father said, "here is Jim! What would you like to drink?" I said I would have what my mother was drinking. My father took me into the kitchen and poured me a drink from a bottle. "This is whiskey," he said. "What your mother drinks." I took a sip and spit it out. Horrible! I asked my father how Mommy could drink such awful stuff. He said she usually mixed it with soda or juice. But why, I demanded? Even if mixed--why would she drink such stuff? To make herself feel good, my father said. Mommy feels bad? I asked. What is wrong with her? My father said she felt fine. Then why does she drink whiskey, I asked? My father said I would find out when I was older.

~Wayne F. Burke~

*

21.

LEARNING HOW TO LIVE WHEN YOU’RE ALL ALONE

During lockdown-21 I became
Stranded like a boat stuck
Inland, stacked high on a pile
Of old foundations that weren’t
For moving & somehow it
Captured me. The drinks
Were cheaper, the music better
& the smoking area always
Open & I lost myself in lost
Classics of film, of books, of
Music & I just knew that this
Life somehow suited me
Better than when I was out
There. Out there I was
Like a cat in a jungle; scared
& running wild through
Fear that those desperate
To see me gone might
Somehow get their way
Whilst home, here, it all
Goes so well I barely
Miss the damn pubs & bars.

~Bradford Middleton~

*

20.

THESE CROWDS EXHAUST ME

Tonight crawls along in a dark, damp &
Humid way that makes everything sticky
& everyone just a little madder as I feel
The heat fry my brain but, then again, that
Might just be the highest of high-grade
Shit I’m smoking right now, but either way
Today has just passed. A struggle to do just
About anything beat me in the morning
& then came to kick my arse by mid-afternoon
Whilst tonight ain’t really felt any better but
Tomorrow, well, TOMORROW.
Tomorrow I’ll turn 53 & I dream of walking
Into town & just get on a bus & go somewhere
New to feed this machine with new stories
Of as yet to be confirmed new places &
New faces as this town exhausts me with its
Maddening crowds.

~Bradford Middleton~

*

19.

Thunderstorm

Back in the days when I was a thunderstorm,
there was brief lightning after every
utterance. I fell and fell, water carpeting
my apartment, making all the boards curl.
Nothing could last without turning
into ruin. I felt no sun burning
through the haze. No warmth except
in my rain. Children blinked to see
me. The old just shook their heads
from their porches. Who would take the time
to run through my onslaught in the hopes
of finding warmth inside? It’s only water
in there, the odd fish I’ve carried with me
since childhood. I waited for overcast
days when I could lie in bed and stay
out of the air. The wind was my only friend.
I dreamed of someday drying out, finding
someone else to fall on.

~CL Bledsoe~

*

18.

I Have Decided to Rescue the Storm,
after an apocryphal line by Matisse

I have decided to rescue the storm,
the fallen branches of my life. I am swept
away by my own intentions and so little
else. The skies, clear in morning. Mud
drying along the road. Fire that only
burns the air and doesn’t warm.
I’d like to find an explosion
of blackbirds fleeing the scene,
and take it home for a nice dessert.
But not everyone is comfortable
with destruction. The truth
of adulthood is that even our tragedies
are commonplace. But the bank
owns so much. All around me
is middle management calling
its own name. Clean pants and see-through
eyes. They’re so pretty and have such
nice things. My couch is older than my
teeth. My carpet is worn floor.
It’s not enough to lie down
in the evenings, I need to hear someone
else’s dreams come morning.

~CL Bledsoe~

17.

Flooded Orchard

Julie is here to tell Thomas
that he can’t start fire
in soaked fruitwood.

Seroquel settles in the forest roots,
bracing trunks with syrup-thick hush
until that forest slickens into swamp.

Julie rushes in like the tide,
anxiously exploring ignition opportunities, but,
Seroquel is too saturated.
The matchmaker was wired wrong.

Each swampy leaf is glossed in refusal
sans wind, minus birdsong;
just the wet patience
of things built to outlast weather.

Julie is not patient—
She claws at the limbs
with sulfur-stained hands,
snaps match after match
against bark that won't give her heat.

She bites the flint
until sparks crown her mouth.
She tears bark with her teeth,
rubs blood through cambium,
sets her forehead against the tree
and screams until the orchard trembles.
The orchard does not answer.

So, Julie opens her jaw
and shoves the lit match down her throat.
Smoke rises.
Despite his teeth full of river,
Thomas begins to burn.

~Jeremy Jusek~

*

16.

Localized Apocalypse

Slick sidewalk, gentle breeze—
me: whistle free,
take in the world
I’ve hydrated, I’ve exfoliated,
shirt clean and clipped by the breeze just right,
I am three compliments into my walk,
my playlist is prophetic, I’m floating like a man
who just aced a blood panel and knows it—

‘til I
stub my toe, it stings
and all grace flees.
The sun goes behind a cloud,
a crow cackles with its whole chest,
and a child points at me—
I’m today’s lesson.
The breeze curdles,
my playlist sighs and skips a song

The whole world undone
by something above wet sock
and less than sneeze.

~Jeremy Jusek~

*

15.

That Guy Gets a New Moon

He tells Claudia first,
while she’s trimming the black edges from her toast;
she doesn’t believe in eating burnt carbon
slides the neat rectangles of bread onto her plate,
and says she likes the new moon fine—
rounder, smoother, like someone polished it in their garage
before hanging it back up.

He’s been on the less-traveled street long enough
to know a moon’s temperament.
Last month’s kept pace with his hours,
never rushing ahead or lagging behind.
When the rest of the world was already
scraping plates, turning on the weather,
he could watch it drag its silver body
over the telephone wires at three in the morning,
cross the yard like a wet dog wading back from the creek.

It followed him wherever he drove—
over the narrow bridge by the feed store,
past the dark rows of soybeans,
through the warehouse district where the roads
smelled of rust and coolant.
Last month’s moon leaned
in through the windshield
casting a shoulder of light over his arm
as if checking the speedometer.

This newest moon hasn’t yet got its full shine—
It doesn’t linger at the maple in his backyard
where the bark peels like loose paint,
doesn’t watch the frost lift from his garden boxes.
When he sits on the porch steps with his coffee,
it looks past him, measuring the horizon.
That Guy offers bacon, and says he don’t trust it.
Claudia refuses. She says it’s just different weather,
says the new moon is cleaner,
the kind of light that could illuminate
a whole street evenly instead of circling one yard.

He tells her about the way the old moon
would catch in the rain barrel, stay there all night,
rippling when the wind shifted. About how
it sometimes rested low, close enough that
the siding on his house would glow like it was lit from inside.

About how, in its final nights,
the old moon’s light thinned to the color of breath on glass,
how it slipped low over the hedges,
brushing the frost with the gentlest edges of itself,
too tired to climb high, too proud to disappear.
The moon allowed leaves to turn in the wind.

He’d sit in his chair watching it find
smaller and smaller places to rest—
the bent lid of the rain barrel, the dip in the neighbor’s roof,
the glint along the rim of his spade by the garden fence.

The glory was in its restraint,
how it no longer tried to light the whole sky,
only the pieces of the world it knew he’d notice.
Claudia declined bacon for a second time
and said, “This moon will be stronger tomorrow.
Maybe you’ll like it more then.”

~Jeremy Jusek~

*

14.

Wanting

My spirit does not rise
as effortless as smoke,
remains rooted
in material cares
wearing me down
as long as I want
what I do not have.

~Gary Beck~

*

13.

I Swear to God

sometimes it seems like

the goddamn cynics and nihilists

and various other strains of nattering

nay-sayers of hopeless negativism are right,

that nothing really matters

in the grand scale of things,

that there’s no real meaning to anything,

as in nothing you do can really mean

or change or add up to something greater

than just a lumpy sum of parts.

Or, at least that’s the line of (quasi) reasoning

I use, occasionally, to justify and / or excuse

those days that come along every now and then,

when you wake up around ten or eleven

and maybe it’s grey and raining

and thundering out there, or,

better yet, one of those quaint,

postcard perfect / phone book cover photo

of a perfect spring day kind of days;

either way, probably best to spend

the better part of it in bed (just to be safe),

the shades pulled down most of the way,

some solo Monk or Red Garland on the radio,

a box fan blowing out a rough accompaniment

from the corner and nothing to do

but drink beer and write poems (maybe even

one about drinking beer and writing poems)

in bed all day.

~Jason Ryberg~

12.

Bird in the Rain

Cloud

banks

that look

strangely like

early 20^th

century socialist sculpture

have pretty much laid claim to the day, and the trees are

having an animated discussion with the wind,

sending what’s left of their leaves to

scatter in every direction, and so far it’s been

one of those mornings where my mind

is hopping ‘round from

puddle to

puddle

bird

the rain.

~Jason Ryberg~

11.

Bird, Homeless

The arborists have come
to chop down two crabapple trees
wedged among the maples,

whose canopies and roots
have tyrannized the garden for years.
Mourning her loss, a female robin,

who just this spring had guarded
three blue eggs on her crabtree
perch sheltering the nest, is upset.

Perhaps she heard the buzz saw
growl, ready to hack away
the fragile twigs that etched

their own elegy on a twilit sky.
Her branch has vanished, and,
checking my curbside mailbox,

I hear her flapping, feel the edge
of an angry wing on my cheek
as she dives at me, seeking her sentinel

post, which has disappeared into eternity.
She tucks her panic under a wing,
chirping her dolor into the spring air

that used to be sweet.

~Donna Pucciani~

10.

Colossus, Revisited

For Emma Lazarus

Give me your tired, your poor…
Lady Liberty holds a torch in one hand,
a tablet in the other, inscribed July 4, 1776,
when men in powdered wigs signed
a document now shredded by those
who are not tired, or poor, or huddled,
except on a golf course.

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore ….
My grandfather Carlo arrived in steerage,
not on a rich man’s yacht, in 1903,
with only his carpenter’s tools and the shirt
on his back, white sleeves rolled up,
ready for work, a word unknown
to the moneyed classes. He didn’t know
a golf ball from a bocce ball.

Like the biblical Lazarus, whose shroud
unwound him into life, Emma reveals us
to ourselves, shows us what kind of country
we are, what we will become,
and what will become of us.

I lift my lamp beside
the golden door.

~Donna Pucciani~

The Poets Consider Death

Featured in a recent anthology on age,
we confer tonight via computer
as the coral sun sags in the western sky
and a gusty wind captures branches
in backyards from Chicago to Cheyenne.

Faces, sophisticated or frowsy,
subtly wrinkled or creased
like an old bed-sheet, prepare to read
versed pronouncements
on widowhood, sudden tragedy,
or the inexplicable prospect of non-being.

Sonnets and sestinas weave stanzas
together like Rackham’s fairies at play
or witticisms at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
The tongues of poets seduce the Reaper,
confronting his ubiquitous scythe
with syllables of prophecy,
beyond dark humor about taxes
or the deep drama of Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Afterwards, we all click off computers
in darkening offices and bedrooms
all over America, as one by one
we welcome the gathering, wordless dark.

~Donna Pucciani~

ON A THEME FROM WAGNER

I told many lies in the Covent Garden Opera House.
—Richard Wagner

(Quoted in Alex Ross, Wagnerism)

The opera house tells many sharp lies.
Later, after curtain, voices bleed downstage.
The next audience loses them in the lights.

Girls dressed as dolls and boys in tight new ties,
enter by twos, told they’re the proper age
for opera houses. They lick up sharp lies

that cling to old horsehair seats. Children’s eyes
notice it all. Then, at a certain age,
that aria comes back—notes like loose lights

tickle back those untruths. Then someone’s wife
gets hurt. No reason, police say—just rage.
An opera program’s open and cold lies—

just clues that get missed, like dull sets that fly
to darkness. They vanish into a cage
of ropes the audience loses to light.

There’s no crew here to make a curtain rise.
Everything stays blocked—her body. The stage—
A house opera composed of sharp lies.
The audience leaves. No music. No lights.

~Mark J. Mitchell~

NOWHERE NEWS

It climbed out a nowhere then turned back
before light found it, burning it with fear.
Too much reality hurt and cold facts
couldn’t be climbed, so nowhere called it back
and held it. Whispered—shush, it won’t attack
another like you. Just stay close, near
this nowhere. Don’t climb out. Never look back.
Light won’t hurt you. The burning’s hope, not fear.

~Mark J. Mitchell~

*

“Wristwatch Grave”

I buried time beneath my bed,

A twitching watch in blood and dust

Its tiny hands still ticking red,

Like guilt that moves because it must.

The years rot slow in mason jars

Beside the songs I shot on sight,

A broken lamp, a childhood scar,

A lullaby I set alight.

You ask if I believe in grace

I grin like someone wired with sin.

I’ve memorized its velvet face;

It always looked like discipline.

And faith? A chain of rust and rain

You wear until it snaps your name.

~Joshua Walker~

Father Figure

The day I slugged my father was forgettable, as I recall.
I must’ve done what a thoughtless boy does—
to someone—or to something.
Or perhaps I did nothing—
and that… was the sin.

I heard his heavy steps,
stomping down the hall,
toward my tiny space.
Closing in—
another beating from loving dad.

Crashing through the door,
thick fingers stabbed my puny chest.
His lips peppered foamy spit.

Untethered, my robot fist punched him
square in his fleshy jaw.
Bulging eyes and gaping mouth,
he dropped like a spent puppet.
Shame-wrapped, I stumbled back.
He pummeled on to my pretend tears
in our circus bear dance.

I feared, in that moment,
the tiny crab-apple would one day fall
at the foot of the hoary tree.

We knew no better…
I still grieve.

~SJ Harrold~

*

Being a Fly

It must be hell to be a fly.
Think about it.
Life begins as a wriggly maggot
swaddled in steaming cow dung,
gorging on bovine waste,
then collapsing into a food coma,
emerging… a pupa.

Precious days are slumbered away—
dreams of soaring with eagles.
When awakened,
the pupae crawl out of the excrement,
to unveil shiny forewings
and flit off,
yearning to leave their mark.

Having skipped adolescence,
there’s much a fly should’ve learned
in fly school,
had there been such a thing—
avoiding flypaper parties,
not preening on flat walls—
lessons learned the hard way.

When the thrill of flight wanes,
the fly is shocked to learn
it must vomit on its food—
else it starves.
Another lesson missed in fly school—
had there been such a thing.

The resentful fly might long to be
a flesh tormentor,
like its green-headed cousin.
Though it consoles itself, knowing
it sows pestilence everywhere it lands,
and rocks showy reflexes,
when not gorging filth.

Alas, the end will come,
far too soon for the poor fly.
An unpleasant demise?
Afraid so.
Smeared on a windshield, arachnid-sucked, or worse,
wings plucked by a monstrous boy.
All inglorious ways to punch a ticket.

So next time pesky muscids
land on Aunt Flo’s potato salad,
remember they were once larval lords
reigning over fecal kingdoms.
As adults, they took to the wind,
living their pitiable days
in less time than Flo’s cycle.

They incessantly buzz about,
taking what they please,
leaving nothing but stomach acid.
The miserable fly merits a swift reckoning.
Roll the towel, strike true,
and send the wretch to fly paradise…
—don’t squish the mayo.

~SJ Harrold~

AND THAT WAS THE NIGHT

The rain washed away the perverts
tweakers in the park roamed around
and stole money from the elderly.
Black boots stomped on the pavement
white socks pulled to ankles, knife between strings.

Breeze blew onto buzzed hair
keys dangled from a skinny wrist.
Tattooed arms flipped an empty garbage can.
A fight broke out by the stairway,
punches hit against soft skin

Teeth knocked out of a shiny golden mouth
blood spilled out juicy red lips
he took out his phone
and recorded a video.

A rooting crowd circled around,
clapping and cheering on the brawl.
Silver sharp knife split a stomach open,
worms slithered out a bleeding heart
and the water peeled a wet banana.

The fire sprung and rose into the streets
teary eyed ladies howled, called the police
and that was the night creativity began.

~Maceo Nightingale~

*

EYE IN THE SKY BLINKED RED

The train roared underground
employees chatted on the platform edge
drank lit up coffee cups.
Red eyed rats coughed out tracking devices
glass doors slid open,
crowd of cyberjocks
boarded the subway.

Steam razzled into the city
hot dogs served after hours
construction workers hammered
away the glitching advertisement screens
selling discounts on marijuana dreams.
insomniac zombies paid for coffee.

She wore gray headphones
and stared at the blue graffiti
sprayed onto the underground walls.
Static clicked, metro tickets swiped.
Late night musicians played their
synths in return for credit card chips.

Gamers sat hunched over computers
drinking caffeine till the morning sings
barista with purple hair called out in a name
she shrugged and poured a drink.
Vaporwave soared out of the speakers
Bass
hummed
low,
cocaine
served
upstairs.
Living
off
broccoli
and
protein bar
Pigeons gathered by the station,
pocket full of breadcrumbs
apples munched by silver teeth
Crunching
video game
tokens
Dancing
in a
pink
suit.

~Maceo Nightingale~

BEDROOM LAMP

Glass shattered onto a fat red nose
the neighbor in 4B danced naked
in the street,
thick legs grooving to harp strings.
Melodies flicked through cocaine
chords plucked on a sleepless night.

Aliens crawled out of a phone,
neon eyes poked through the screen
little legs twitched and leaked purple juice
feedback sang out of abandoned malls
night vision goggles hung up on a burning car.

Blackjack hands on surveillance cameras
paranoid babies, diapers of cow milk
and the blue lesbian wigs lost anonymity.
Firework explosions cracked open the soda bottle.
Eyes blazed in blue smoke, ears sniffed red tomato sauce.

Same sex marriage on a tennis court
swung the wooden racket at California
and stuffed the prop 8 sign
into the trunk of the car.
Mask on, gun reloaded,
One eyed twitch for a rang bell.

~Maceo Nightingale~