Smoke and Mirrors

Never knew what it would do to you:
The golden crown
and the throne.
And then you stick your fingers in the air and
like a magician,
you make that rabbit appear again.
Look closely, and you see its bleeding gums and rotting teeth.
You're careful, though, and won't let the audience see the decay.
You live for the audience-- can't disappoint the paying customers.
Their clapping hands feed the beast inside.
But it's no secret: The beast comes out sometimes, looking for easy prey.
These are the ones who have seen
the
real one.
And they are quiet, knowing quiet is better.

The Work

If only I could see the head:

Its black soft hairs: the first glimpse of life.

I push some more.

Slow delivery: Needing that deep sigh of finished.

Then rocking you under the sunset, eyelids flickering

and seeing the miracle flash in those tiny eyes: a balm for my lonely toil.

Heron

Oh, Heron
flying with a neck
turned inward toward the uniform
of the clean and white pressed feathers,
and the elegant way you swoop
down and pierce the fish that is yours.
Oh, Heron to be pricked from the water
and placed in the folds of the elephant's skin: molded
into the wrinkly gray: an odd place to be, where we all
will be:
Navigating between the dark
and the light.

The Truth

Sharp knife is next to the body.

Shiny silver, shiny blood...

It was an easy movement into the chest.

There was nothing to it.

Really…

We thought the divide was so great: shaky, worn body near the top

of a rocky summit.

But the truth stays

steady like the Ground Zero

American flag:

We are closer to

the red than we think.

How then do we keep the promise

bigger than wisps of good luck dandelion flowers?

Bleed from the vine.

A Job To Do

A glass cleaner is dangling

outside the windows

that are his today.

His reflection is misty.

At any moment,

this flying soldier

could go down, down

past the typing and the clicking and the calling

He still cleans.

Do or do not.

That’s it.

A wipe and another wipe...

Still dirty...

Hollow

She cried into the tree hollow.
She felt every bit
the small one of the forest that night.
She wasn't a young deer, though.
She had been out of the herd for a while.
She looked up at the trees:
Thr oaks were creatures
not delighted with her presence.
She wasn't sure why she called
out into the hollow
of a tree of all things.
She'd just thought
that someone would
hear her and wonder at
her cry.
Earlier, she'd gone by the herd
where her father stood: his head high and swung back.
And she'd cried out to him:
It was deep and from
the pit of her.
And he'd pranced off for berries,
disappearing into the light, the way only he could.

Surprise On a City Street

Eighteen hours and you were here.

And they were surprised in the middle of the night,

there was enough light to see:

creation.

They wonder at the construction

of fingernails

and pupils.

It is enough

to withstand

the excrement and the pulling

hard on the bodies.

Grasping for the milk as if he were digging, digging...

Then there is the wide-mouthed-animal-screaming-him.

But…
On this long walk,

he is graffiti,

or loopy messages

discovered

in concrete

when they pause.