how am i different?
Jailbird
There are photographs nailed against the walls
Of the white tent.
An old woman sells her coincidences at the farmer’s market,
Translated in black
And white.
They cost $301 dollars each--
A hefty price for
Bridges off the Starnbergesee, and Achtung
German cynicisms, the shadowed cheeks of girls and boys
Skating on frozen ponds, and moss
Growing between trodden bricks in small passage-
ways.
They are probably originals, but who knows
How many dozens can be reproduced in a lifetime.
The hazy print suggests early sixties, or,
Nostalgia,
Of the life of motifs.
In the corner, an awkward protrusion sleeps
In feathered gloss and downy light.
An albatross, perhaps, with its eyes closed tight
Dreaming of dipped dances between the moon and
Sun rock
Of it’s days of freedom.
One sees no capture in a cage,
only wistful
Resting in a small enclosure, and silence
Among the nested remnants of the bars of shadow
That stripe across the sleeping body.
“Jailbird.”
White hair and gray trembling fingers draw up behind me
Like a shadow and whispers
“So you’re one of those, who likes
This picture, as well.”-- I look back at her
And me, both standing
Beneath the shade of her white tent.
______________
What gives me the right to worry about
The world, as if the world depended
On me for worrying.
How can I know that when I look
Down upon the glittering silhouette
Pressed over the sunset backwash of the bay,
That the sensations I feel is joy and not pain.
For nightmares say nothing of the current situation,
And dreams have never been interpreted
Under duress--
The heavy boulder that clings to my knees
Draw me closer to the bottom, perceiving
Smoking chimneys and broken asteroids.
I want to forget the person I am and
Become a jiggling block of congealed pigs’ blood.
At least that claims to be what it is--
And is what it is--
And what it is is nourishment for the plenty.