Birds

 
the poem
in that literary magazine

such pretty words 

it’s an exquisitely feathered
brilliantly colored
miniature songbird 
admiring itself 
between nervous head flicks
in the small plastic mirror
hanging in its cage

the poem
I just wrote 

a large black raven
twitching carrion
in its indigo beak 
death and eternity
in its cold eye 
crow-hopping
unsteadily away 
after having slammed
mid-flight
into the window glass



Death Row

 
we’re all on death row 
the end of each day
another temporary stay of execution 
but what will you do tomorrow? 

will you sit in your death row cell
consumed with dread fixation on
the ticking clock? 

will your death be quick 
the snap of a light switch
then darkness? 

or will it be a gradual dimming 
a slow tearing away 
of everything you are 
as you spin on a spit
over the fire of dementia? 

will you try to drown out
this inevitable cadence
in a room littered 
with empty bottles
needles 
a bent spoon
scattered pill bottles
all illuminated by a flickering tv screen? 

will your fleeting solace
be shattered by the harsh early morning light 
of awareness
that you’ve actually moved the clock hands
ahead not backwards? 

or is death your intimate friend 
the certainty of extinction
a context
the compulsion
the focus 
the electrical current
to do what needs to be done? 

in the short light
of this winter’s day

do you push for
the extreme life 
the ever-present ticking down of the clock
taken as a beat
for dancing wildly
ecstatically?  

do you burn with a ferocity
that illuminates
and warms
those around you? 

we’re all on death row 
the end of each day
another temporary stay of execution 
but what will you do tomorrow?



Transmogrification


a gentle flickering of fluorescent lights

subtly animates 
the hospital crash cart
a pulsing dance 
of crumpled bloody wipes
and expended tubes
the only movement
in the vacated room

the accompaniment of steady beeps 
and strident alarms
now silent

a bed sheet drawn up
to cover her face

yet 
she still sees 
briefly regards all this
in confusion

then is seized 
by a great ripping apart
forcefully 
and irresistibly 
yanked upward
and outward
into a painfully bright
new daylight

wings suddenly stabilize
newfound flight
through strange new skies
amidst a frantically wheeling 
flock