A Compass With No North

Like the Minotaur lost in the labyrinth I search. The path doubled back, the way elusive. For me the pen is heavier than the sword. A man who starts but rarely finishes. Not a firebrand, a dud match.

Tried for the warrior-poet, I am neither. Notebooks, journals full of words pressed together in the dark. Words words words. A mouth full of clichés. A lifeboat caught in a maelström, a compass with no north. Memory closets cluttered, the bone dry rattle dancing in the dust. Hallways that lead nowhere, barred doors, opaque windows. Too much seeker, never enough doer.

I think often on death. Not death as an abstract concept, death as absolute/concrete reality. My own death. To what greater purpose have I put my life while waiting for the deus ex machina to show? We cannot all do great things, but the little things count.

I feel it
Perched high up on vision’s periphery
The blue black bird,
Stranger to me.
Down drops death
The drop fast, the trauma blunt.
A controlled fall
The hammer blow
The shock to the system.

To Eat You I Must Kill You

No arrow of enlightenment fletched with the feathers of truth,
No ruthless predator preying on the slow, pruning the herd
No metaphorical eternal struggle
And nothing like a simile.

No mustachioed Marlin Perkins,
No battered Range Rover,
No tawny lions of the Serengeti,
No howling hyena bitches.
No circle of life.

Just one hawk,
One dove,
In my front yard.
The dove lost.

Bird Play

We soar like an eagle,
We sing like a bird,
We waddle like a penguin,
We feel the hawk blowing,
We wear an albatross necktie,
We are sometimes vultures,
We are sometimes chicken,
We sometimes eat crow,
We are free as a bird.
Maybe.

We have two small brown birds living in our living room. In a cage. We lock them in and grant them only a small universe. Instead of soaring free they perch. And they sing. They can see beyond their bars. They cannot escape.

To us they are pets, pretty amusements. To them we are jailers bringing bread and water. In what gilded cage do we live? Where do we get our bread and water? What is our song?

Pricked by pride we grasp and hold onto that which we cannot keep. Better to humble ourselves, to let go, to let God. Only then are we wise owls.