The Panic Bird

just flew inside my chest. Some

days it lights inside my brain,

but today it's in my bonehouse,

rattling ribs like a birdcage.

If I saw it coming, I'd fend it

off with machete or baseball bat.

Or grab its scrawny hackled neck,

wring it like a wet dish rag.

But it approaches from behind.

Too late I sense it at my back --

carrion, garbage, excrement.

Once inside me it preens, roosts,

vulture on a public utility pole.

Next it flaps, it cries, it gares, 

it rages, it struts, it thrusts

its clacking beak into my liver,

my guts, my heart, rips off strips.

I fill with black blood, black bile.

This may last minutes or days.

Then it lifts sickle-shaped wings,

rises, is gone, leaving a residue --

foul breath, droppings, molted midnight

feathers. And life continues.

And then I'm prey to panic again.

The Panic Bird

Robert Phillips

perfect in every moment of its existence

There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence... Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

her eyes

her eyes were the color of faraway love

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks [excerpt]

Pablo Neruda

Art is a wicked thing.

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are. 

Georgia O'Keefe

The Ivy Crown

The whole process is a lie, 

unless, 

crowned by excess, 

it break forcefully,

one way or another,

from its confinement-

or find a deeper well.

Antony and Cleopatra

were right;

they have shown

the way. I love you

or I do not live

at all.

Daffodil time

is past. This is

summer, summer!

the heart says,

and not even the full of it. 

No doubts

are permitted – 

though they will come

and may

before our time

overwhelm us.

We are only mortal

but being mortal

can defy our fate.

We may

by an outside chance

even win! We do not

look to see

jonquils and violets

come again

but there are,

still,

the roses!

Romance has no part in it.

The business of love is

cruelty which,

by our wills,

we transform

to live together.
It has its seasons,

for and against,

whatever the heart

fumbles in the dark

to assert

toward the end of May.

Just as the nature of briars

is to tear flesh,

I have proceeded

through them.

Keep

the briars out,

they say.

You cannot live

and keep free of

briars.

Children pick flowers.

Let them.

Though having them

in hand

they have no further use for them

but leave them crumpled

at the curb’s edge.

At our age the imagination

across the sorry facts

lifts us

to make roses

stand before thorns.

Sure

love is cruel

and selfish 

and totally obtuse- 

at least, blinded by the light,

young love is.

But we are older,

I to love

and you to be loved,

we have,

no matter how,

by our wills survived

to keep

the jeweled prize

always

at our finger tips.

We will it so

and so it is

past all accident.

The Ivy Crown

William Carlos Williams

where nothing much happens now

When I remember your love,

I weep, and when I hear people 

talking of you, 

something in my chest,

where nothing much happens now,

moves as in sleep.

Send The Chaperones Away [excerpt]

Rumi

Just a day like any other, the sun not even shining,

You were into your Black Period,
as you called it, saying,
If Picasso could have a Blue one,
then why can't I have black?
You said it made dressing easy for you:
black shoes, black stockings, black dress,
black shawl, eye shadow, and your hair dyed black.

You said it made shopping easy.
You said you never tired of asking,
Do you have it in black?
You were always ready for funerals.
You said you'd never get married,
but if you did you'd already picked out
the color of your dress.

At first I couldn't believe my eyes:
a red streak in your hair,
gold earrings,
socks peeking out from your black skirt
that might be, just might be, red.
And that jacket, a deep blue, perhaps?

Next time there was yellow.
Just a day like any other, the sun not even shining,
not even spring, but your tee-shirt
canary yellow, gaudy as an egg yolk
splashed across a black iron pan.

You said it just happened.
You said you couldn't explain it.
But it was, you said, like
waking at midnight,
opening the curtains
and finding nothing but light.

Yellow
Brian Daldorph - The University of Kansas

Il Pleut

It’s Raining

It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in

memory

And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my

life O little

drops

Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of

auricular cities

Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an

ancient music

Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and

below

Il Pleut

Guillaume Apollinaire

She was gone

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.

The Road
Cormac McCarthy

She knew her beauty’s power.

The goddess threw her snow-white arms around him
as he held back, caressing him here and there,
and suddenly he caught fire — the same old story,
the flame he knew by heart went running through him,
melting him to the marrow of his bones…
...she knew her beauty’s power.

The Aeneid [excerpt]
Virgil