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

Pelican

The flooded ground of the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah/ Photo by the author

You swallow the sun
Every morning
When the fragile earth
Still sleeps
Beneath a pallid sky

Fragile too is my home
Beside the churning ocean
The air captivating my eyes
Its memories dancing,
Laughing, crying with joy

Bereft of wisdom
I came here
To find what was left of me
After the broken glass
Of my childhood

I buried my father
As deep as I could

As for my body
It awoke to find freedom
From the storm of parentage
Blood is much more thin
Than water

I learned this in your bed
But I opened up a window
And fled to the dazzling ocean,
To a bright shore
Unscathed, unsullied,
Still a virgin, untouched by
His desire

Far away, far beyond the horizon
I see a shape glinting,
Promising a relief from my shadow

Will it come
Before the Afterlife?

Sinking beneath the waves,
Shattering, my old life dies
Yet I am renewed by solitude
In the silent kiss
Of your contentment
Content to lay without touching
Lips without posessing
Ecstasy without violation

Where did you come from?
From the raging blue waters
Or from the naked sky
Decorated with gilded stars
And the hallowed moon

It is all a wonder
To my boy's eyes
That life should hold
Such ancient mysteries
That an entire life
Can be renewed
After it was lost

Not by chance
Did you come
Not by a happenstance
Did the ocean part
From his lover's embrace
With the sky

You open up your mouth
To renew the light of the sun
To spread my wings again
To stretch my two wings
Over the salty and dangerous sea

Someone Walked On My Grave

Distant footsteps
Echo in my heart
From far away places
I have tried to escape

But someone walked on my grave
Reminding me that Summer's
Sensuous brilliance will always be
Overtaken by Fall's jealous chill

How I tried to forget
Languishing in the tide of desire
Hiding my demons
In the dusty back of the attic closet

But someone opened the door
And peered inside
And now I am naked
In the advance of
Winter's ravaging hand

What more could I
Have done to hide?

He couldn't have recognized me,
And yet in my dreams he found me

Knock, knock, knock
Father, you opened the door
To my demons,
Letting the rampage out

I thought for sure
I was safe
In pleasure beneath the willow trees,
Spilling their sorrow in bright green
Cascades over the damp earth

But someone walked on my grave
And I recognized my mortality
In the mirror
Where once youth had promised
To hold me tight

As My Father's Eye Watches Me

"As My Father's Eye Watches Me", Oils & Sterling silver on canvas/ Painting in progress by the author

Flint, my heart embraces you. 
The place men fear to journey,
I have traversed and returned. 
Unscathed? 
Who can say, but for the shadows making love to my skin. 

Before I knew you I was a child. 
Freedom was ignorance born from the womb. 
On your sacrificial stone, 
Bent over backwards, 
My body became yours. 

Blood is a natural thing, 
Yet how unnatural to warm your bed, 
Taste your tongue, share your nights. 

My father's eye watches me, 
As I undress, as I strip, my bones exposed. 
Yet I clutched a golden eagle to my breast. 
I gathered precious jadestone 
And summoned the Smoking Mirror to avenge me. 

Now where are you? 
The jaguar, she has claimed your soul for me, 
And very slowly shall I savor it. 

Back to the beginning, I travel alone...
Back to my rebirth, as my father's eye watches me.