Wings, His Mood.

His mood is like a shadow, that moves swiftly on
Its wings-
On abled beast, his harp it sings,
Like shattered, broken things-
In the dark, we weep like stars, and the night
Is a spell of words, and sorrows are broken,
And time is gone.
My mother said she was not a part of anything,

That she is not the part of the world that is between
Things. She speaks better than me, her thoughts are
Relinquished; she said she gave away medals once,
And a harp, to her next door neighbor, who had three
Cats, and seven pigeons that pooped in a well.

It isn’t like me to beat around the bush, and not say what I
Am supposed to say, it is not like me to speak,
When no one speaks, and everything is spoken in
Blades of grass, and Nature is wrought with the churning
Of the wind, and the clouds are taken like sorrows.

In and out, the harp sings like sorrows, and everything is folding
In the grass, and the spring is folding, and the light is folding,
And everything folds with it. The fear is there, the fear is sharp
And bitter as blades of grass, and we are far away, and far
Away is close to us, and everything around us is sharper than
The eye, and what we see like burnt pieces of wood.

The forest, the trees, the eyes see from far away, and everything
Is far away, like the roaring of the ocean, and the shadows
Pound at the doorway of the old house we lived in when I was three,
And the mother, and the father, and the brother, the tallest of the elms,
Sits back and watches everything drown.

The water is like Shadows, and the serpent opens its mouth, and
Everything moves with it, and in it, is the tongue of the beast,
The night time that speaks of stars, and wisdom, and trees.
My mother thought my life was not supposed to be like yesterday,

That we are above what we are, and death is not the end. Only the beginning
Of a forgotten war, the fiendish fiends, and all hope brings. Everything is what
It is, and nothing is what it seems. We are not the warriors of the night,
Of the screams of children as they play, and the pigeons scream from far away;
We are gone, and we decide, I open the front door and let the sunlight seep in.
Guilt eats me alive, like something that is a tree that stands tall, and guilt is not.

The Last Boat.

The boat goes around and around in a circle

in the middle of a lake that is polluted

and filled with broken bottles.

Rain has been falling every day for a week.

The weatherman says it’s going to be a scorcher

every day in September, but I don’t believe a

word of it.

I told you about the tattered magazines I found

in the alleyway, how they were torn up and thrown

away by a man who hated the government,

who despised the U.K. and Israel.

He used to be a lawyer, an attorney,

and was fired by his boss for being late on three

occasions.  The man wanted to sue him but

he fled the country, perhaps to South America.

No one has seen him since then.

The boat still goes around and around in a circle

in the middle of a lake that is polluted,

and the president declares an emergency on India;

while, somewhere in Ohio, an old man watches

the news and cries over his granddaughter who

was lost in a storm.

When We Forget.

My problem is with forgetting.
Everyone forgets everything-lunch; breakfast; an old grandfather
clock that was left in someone’s attic, years ago, a grandfather
clock that no longer runs, a grandfather clock that is ancient as
the French and Indian War.
My problem is with forgetting.
How Aunt Sarah forgets my birthday; forgets to send out Christmas
cards every three years; forgets the letters in her license plate.
She always remembers the numbers, why she forgets the letters,
I don’t know.
Sometimes, I refuse to believe I am smart.
That I am going nowhere. Every day I believe this.
I am going nowhere. I don’t have a car. My apartment is filled
with alcoholic nomads.
Every day I look up at the sky and see the darkness behind
the puffy clouds and wonder why God created a mess-of brains,
guts, and gills-well, not necessarily gills.
I, too, forget birthdays sometimes.
My Cousin William thinks it’s dumb.