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Birds and the Beasts
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Sunday You shoved me into my bedroom wall
Screaming and cursing
My wings, fluttering, helpless,
My feathers, jostled, fall
I slapped your face with the rough of my palm
Stinging and hurting
I roared at you, senseless
Lips wet with anger and gall
You’d grind me into the sheets
Gasping, and chanting your name
Or I’d take you by force
And you screaming in pain
You enrage me, you chain me,
You estrange me, you age me
But I cannot leave you:
can a bird leave its caging?
But I don’t want to hold you
or love you,
or touch you
I must bite you
and slap you,
And grab you
and fuck you
We used to wrestle,
Greek and gracious
Loving and hating
I’ll never escape this
I know you
You hate me!
I feel lost when you’re here
I feel lost when you’re gone
I open my cage but I cannot move on
You careess each lost feather
We are ruined and wrong
I am a beast yet again at the flick of your tongue
I am a beast, claws inside you
I am a bird, no song!
This is a very fine,
This is a very fine, powerful, poem. The subtlety of its rhyme scheme gives an aural support to the subtlety of the emotion. I say subtlety because, in reading it, I detect to emotions: the very specific rage that throbs through the lines like a dislocated joint; and then, the almost silen sorrow---the subtle emotion the poem has concealed almost to the end----of the final line. Most of the lines are fairly short, and this gives them a kind of tenseness that one would associate with a coiled spring about uncoil all of its power. The longer lines give a brief---very brief---relief from the building up of the rage (the tension in the spring as it is turned tighter and tighter), and the last two long lines (just above the final two lines) have the effect of slamming the brakes down hard (yes, I know I am mixing my metaphors), and the spring uncoils and snaps into the final line, which bears the sound of near silence (to borrow a phrase from Simon and Garfunkel) as the brevity of the final line deploys and brings conclusion to the poem.
And yet, as a reader, I most definitely have the eerie feeling that . . . although the poem has concluded, the situation the poem is describing in highly metaphorical language, has not concluded; and the inflictor of the damage, to which the speaker of the poem is responding, does not intend to conclude the infliction of damage. Therefore, I . . . as a reader who deeply admires this Poet's work . . . will continue to hope for a sequel.
Starward
You are inspiring me to
You are inspiring me to organize my poems into series, so the stories may be told. Thank you as always for your well-considered insight and genuine engagement, it makes me excited to write again.
This is one of the most
This is one of the most important comments I have ever received, and has made a dismal day much better than I expected it to be. Although quite unworthy of it, I cherish it. But I am even more excitedly enthusiastic at the prospect of some series poems from you. That is the most important part of this comment, and I applaud your intention and await the results . . . at your convenience of course . . . with enthusiasm. Reading your poetry is an exquisite experience; reading more of your poetry will be even more exquisite, watching you build upon an already impressive foundation.
Starward