I Could Wring That Sparrow's Neck

A happy bird enjoys Fall trees at Galena Creek Park, Reno, Nevada/ Photo by the author

The Truth was
What you taught me
In my bed at night
When mother slept
Not soundly
As her house crumbled down
Around her
As her heart crashed down
Around us

Stillness throughout
Our prison walls
The birds outside were free
And how I could wring
That sparrow's neck

To be so free
In the bracing clouds
The fields of sapphire blue
Singing as the walls
Fell down around us

Mother, how peacefully
You slept
While my innocence
Disintegrated inside my sheets
Your sheets
His sheets
Wet with my salty sweat

How quickly faith dies
While everything I held to be true
Became lies

Your perfect red lips, your illusions
You slept
While my childhood fell to pieces
Around us

How pious
To feel the words of that black book
Pass clean through me
Like a sword
Cutting, tearing, slicing
My innocence away

Your one "God", your prophets
Your commandments
All lies
And the world falls down
Below you

Sleep soundly now, mother
I dare you to dream again
To feel safe in the silver sky
Lit by a delicate moon
Waning

Are you free
In your sapphire sky
Your affluence?
And do your tears
Taste like diamonds
Cutting hard, tearing harder

I have passed through
All these ephemeral things...
"God", prophets, commandments
While the sparrow sang
Free and embraced by the clouds
As my idealism crashed down
Around me

Now I pick up my two feet
While the earth remains
Still beneath me
Gently calling, calling, calling

Even the free sparrow must alight
To find its home
In the full, green branches
As time passes on around us

One "God", I have no use for you
Prophets, your words failed the naked child
Commandments, your anger and jealousy
I banish from the citizenship of my soul
Black book, your pages have no wisdom left
To bind the passions of my heart
As humanity goes on and on
Without you

Little sparrow, free sparrow
I make peace with your liberated nature
Now that I have let loose
The binds that kept me
As the walls of my boyhood
Crashed down around me

Hush please
And let me sleep tonight
Alone and in peace
In the silver sapphire of the sky
As time and the world
Pass on without me