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Hey Crow |
Having ascended nine circles your feathers still space
I know the knife cannot burn.
I walk down Wilshire corridor startled by the caw in my brain
Hey Crow. What are you crowing about this morning
As I pass under up there on telephone pole?
What is gravity? Are you my messenger?
It’s 6 AM and the streets are silent like the beach has evacuated
Into morning coffee.
Come overcast, no one knows what to do.
I know you Crow. I know of the caw that spiderwebs the morning's face.
After the sack of my youth
It was your voice reverberating through the mountains.
Hell is plural and occupies complacent zip codes.
Your caw is the caw of the ostracized bird
Of the hideous figure condemned to the rooftops
I notice Crow the absence of your brothers and sisters
As if they never were
You are especially okay with this.
Okay when the Gods fixed the lottery
Drew your trembling name and settled on attachments.
As Crow’s companion was murdered “were dissatisfied”
With Crow’s daughter ruined “they went for the head”
Crow left with nothing not even a memory.
You disfigured yourself.
"Look," cried Crow, "My endurance is frightening
I am the beautiful open wound that never closes
A black jumble of impenetrable bone."
So you have your pass. What am I to make of it?
What are you crowing about, Crow?
There is something heroic hypnotic in the shriek
That endures like weather will never get you
There is no asylum from heights
There is nowhere you are not.
Crow on top of iglesias
Crow on top of eglise
Now you’re in East End
It’s a hundred years ago with you crowing the streetlamps’ nonfiction
And a savage named Jack.
I know you Crow. I know what the gone face looks like.
I appreciate it.
We are both guest professor
A meteorologist handles the knife.
My morning once surface has burned off to crimson
It will always be like this:
Us circling each other with the first fascination of strangers
Loving in passing
Till one gleans the black atom of vulnerability
From underneath the other’s blacker wings.
Yes, thank you Crow. Thank you for my debt since retired and the ill-timed shadow.
For my appendix exploding.
For the southern flash of the Horror family.
Thank you for my servitude in restaurants
And for the blackest music I have ever heard
Not to be included
on the soundtrack of my bohemian life.
copyright 2007
Eric
Steineger |
