HURLING CROWBIRDS AT MOCKINGBARS - Buddy Wakefield

If we were created in God’s image

then when God was a child

he smushed fire ants with his fingertips

and avoided tough questions.

There are ways around being the go-to person.

Even for ourselves.

Even when the answer is clear

like the holy water gentiles were drinking

when they realized

“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.”

I thought those were chime shells in your pocket

so I chucked a quarter at it

hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note.

You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars

then you abandoned me for not making sense.

Evidently I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.

For example, I know mercy

when I have enough money to change the jukebox

at a gay bar.

You know mercy whenever

someone shoves a stick of morphine

straight up into your heart.

Goddamn it felt amazing

the days you were happy to see me.

So I smashed a beehive against the ocean

to try and make our splash last longer.

Remember all the honey

had me looking like a jellyfish ape

but you walked off the water

in a porcupine of light, strands of gold

drizzled out to the tips of your wasps.

This is an apology letter to the both of us

for how long it took me to let things go.

It was not my intention to make such a production

of the emptiness between us,

playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano

to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.

It’s just that I could have swore you sung me a love song back there

and that you meant it

but I guess some people just chew with their mouth open.

So I ate ear plugs alive with my throat, hoping they’d get lodged

deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you

leaving, so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying

all my eggs were in a basket of red flags, all my eyes to a bucket

of blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze.

I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off, trying to drive

your nickels to a well

when you were happy to let those wishes drop.

But I still show up for gentleman practice

in the company of lead dancers

hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.

Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman,

or is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still

dance with me. Less like a waltz for panic,

more for the way we’d hoped to swing

the night we took off everything

and we were swinging for the fences.

Don’t hold it against my love. You know I wanna breathe deeper

than this. I didn’t mean to look so serious, didn’t mean

to act like a filthy floor, didn’t mean to turn us both

into some cutting board

but there were knives stuck

in the words where I came from.

Too much time in the back of my words.

I pulled knives from my back and my words.

I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away.

And I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady.

Boy I know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell.

You know I know I might’ve gone and lost my breath

but I wanna show you how I found my breath to death.

It was buried under all the wind instruments

hidden in your castanets. Goddamn. If you ever wanna know

how it felt when you left, if you ever wanna come inside

just knock on the spot

where I finally pressed stop

playing musical chairs with your exit signs.

I’m gonna cause you a miracle

when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.

“Forgiveness is for anyone

who needs safe passage through my mind.”

If I really was created in God’s image

then when God was a boy

he wanted to grow up to be a man.

A good man.

And when God was a man - a good man - he started

telling the truth in order to get honest responses.

He’d say,

Yeah, I know… I really should’ve worn my cross.

Again. But I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.

That is not what I came here to do.

He said,

I’m pretty sure

I just came here to love you.

Popular Romance - Paul Guest

To hum in a smoke-dank alley a song by Elvis

was not the height of my love for you. To turn

my arm from its socket like a hateful thing

was not devotion only. To speak your name

like a spell to my imagined foes was not

peace, no, not ever. Rather, you were a stone

I licked and pretended to eat. You were

ever a dream of falling. An odor of smoke.

You were the design of my worst

crimes. What I stole for love added up.

It added up to nothing. To the air perfumed

by an absent woman. To a box

filled with crushed chalk. God save me

from the stars, once and for all—

I have had enough. Let me love anything

but that: let me go free and dream

of green oceans and the surf

that batters some other world to sleeplessness.

O. It is enough to whisper only

this. To speak to the flame in your breast

and hear nothing else. Once

I believed I could possess

what touched you: the worn sweater,

or the song on the radio

that meant nothing and all in that instant.

Against your door I pressed

my ear, and heard nothing, the whisper

of water, maybe, a breath of cool air—

the gossip of your absence—

and nothing in me could knock or wait,

and all around me the night

spread like water through a rag,

and I let my hands drop whatever they held.

THE FAIRY REEL - Neil Gaiman

If I were young as once I was, and dreams

     and death more distant then,

I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep

     half in the world of men,

So half of me would stay at home, and

     strive for Faërie in vain,

While all the while my soul would stroll up

     narrow path, down crooked lane,

And there would meet a fairy lass and

     smile and bow with kisses three,

She'd pluck wild eagles from the air and

     nail me to a lightning tree

And if my heart would run from her or

     flee from her, be gone from her,

She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then

     she'd take it on with her

Until one day she'd tire of it, all bored

     with it and done with it

She'd leave it by a burning brook, and off

     brown boys would run with it.

They'd take it and have fun with it and

     stretch it long and cruel and thin,

They'd slice it into four and then they'd

     string with it a violin.

And every day and every night they'd

     play upon my heart a song

So plaintive and so wild and strange that

     all who heard it danced along

And sang and whirled and sank and trod and

     skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled

Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they'd

     crumble into wheels of gold....

But I am young no longer now; for sixty

     years my heart's been gone

To play its dreadful music there, beyond

     the valley of the sun.

I watch with envious eyes and mind, the

     single–souled, who dare not feel

The wind that blows beyond the moon,

     who do not hear the Fairy Reel.

If you don't hear the Fairy Reel, they will

     not pause to steal your breath.

When I was young I was a fool. So wrap

     me up in dreams and death.

for one I knew - Charles Bukowski

Of all the iron beds in paradise

yours was the most cruel

and I was smoke in your mirror

and you sluiced your hair with jade,

but you were a woman and I was a

boy, but boy enough for an iron bed

and man enough for wine

and you.

now I am a man,

man enough for all,

and you are, you

are

        old

not now so cruel,

now your iron bed

is empty.