Being A Practicing Bird

Being A Practicing Bird

Birds flying as fish swimming, skim branches and cry their calls.

Dim in the trees, the sky glows the patina of old silver.

Rain dark limbs and the ground growing the green

Of new summer.

We are blessed.

There is plenty to eat.

I watch from my upstairs window because it is wonderful

In the trees. Jay's Yi! Yi! Yi! of danger comes in loud.

Gray cat creeps along the edge of the yard.

Being a practicing Bird, I chase it away.

Preditor to Preditor.

The cat ran into the thickett.

I am a bird with silvery wings.

My top-knot is dark and red.

My tail feathers drag the ground behind me.

I fly to my nest and practice my bird ways.

The long days of eggs and waiting.

My mate with his jet bright eyes.

His call I recognise forever.

As birds are, I wish to be without a fear for tomorrow.

Jay soars toward me, flies back to the edge of the wood,

Returns, drops down to find the yellow corn.

Pica de Gayo. The beak of the chicken.

All this: which is a mystery and a holy song.

Light finds passage through the limbs.

Quick flint of Crow flying through.

Just below the roof line.

Never so close in.

The suspension of flight, black wings held in long

Crow seconds.

Jay flies back again. Bright as any tropical fish.

Swimming in light.

Practicing beauty.

Sublime

Changeling

Changeling

Pony was my friend, and we galloped the lake trails.
Jay bird knew everything before hand. It was dusk but I
Knew the way by heart. Everything was rough with summer...

Moon and stars, the wind in my face. Hoof sound on
Hard ground. And when I fell, it was a long time
Before I knew I was in the world.

I was not a milkmaid. I had not met the reindeer
Along the merry stream. Mama's singing lulled me to
Dreaming. A hunting song... I was bright eyed

Fox, rusty red, and I caught the rooster
In my mouth. I ran the hills and rocks. I lived in
Danger for my life. I knew how to disappear,

How to hide and kill, winning my warrior name.
Pony, pony. Strong legs and thick mane. Dappled love.
Horse of war. I was a mare and he loved my lovely neck.

We grazed. My life was green. My legs were long and I
Wrapped his ribs like a lover. Feathers in my hair.
It was summer all the time. I wore my skin animal brown.

How was I to be a girl?

I was not my mother's pet bird.
I had none of her racetrack curves.
I lived in a room outside her world.
She never knew who her daughter was.

09/08

Stand UP

Stand UP!

In the world of ten-thousand things,
All the choices and demanding voices
Calling and cursing and pleading and asking and asking and asking…
It is easy to forget your own name, make a life out of plastic and hide
Out in the television for about half the time it takes to live a life.
It used to be easier to be alive. There were people to throw you a life-line.
It used to be that we all knew how to live the good life
And die a good death, but now we only know the harshest of reality…
We're beat up, screwed up, jerked around, put down!
Mess 'em up good and call it another fucking day in the life of an
American disaster. Feed ‘em on fear and lies then crank up the call-up to
Fight for the American nightmare.

In the world of ten-thousand lies, all the people rushing by and looking back
At the past and wondering, What the hell happened to my life? Looking
At the future and asking, What the fuck am I going to do with my life?
It's easy to forget about your history when you're always high
On one of the ten-thousand things that take you right out of your skin.
It used to be easier to be alive.
It used to be that we knew how to live the good life.
And death was just a word, and not a lifestyle.
The pain that comes with giving up so young and thinking, Fuck it!
You can't tell me how to live my life! I don't give a damn about anything any more.

In the world of the millions and billions of hard-case losers, the American people
Vomited out all over the street, the loser boys and girls that can't get it
Right and their loser parents who can't make enough money to even pay the
Fucking rent— Can't buy food and gasoline in the same week. You aren’t worth
Shit if you can't buy the ten-thousands of things that keep you deep in debt--
And the money has not trickled down yet!
I hope you weren't holding your breath
Waiting for the jackpot to come in. It's enough to make you sick enough to join the
War.
Kick some other loser's ass! We used to make enough money to get by.
We used to know how to live the good life.
The murder of our hope for a future kicks us down, and we sign up to die
For the rich pricks in a world of ten-thousand-thousand enemies.
You have to be on guard and walk the lazer-line

Between us and them… Start another war to overthrow the instigators of our misery.
In the world of the ten-thousand reasons to go to war and fight over the last of our
Precious resources for the fucks who own the plastic and the
Metal and the
Oil and the
Filthy air we breathe... Stand up! Stop throwing your life in the trash for nothing —
Remember how to live!
It used to be we all knew how to dance the good life long before we let them cage us
In debt and hate and work us like dogs-- we shared the sweet life!
And death was a end, not a life-style. Not a walking around attitude of bringing the
House we can't even afford to own down on our own heads. Wake up!
Refuse to believe the lies. Refuse to walk the chalk line straight into the
Green teeth of Destruction. We’re all human beings. Wake up and remember how to
Love.

Stop being a tool in the hands of the monsters
Stop being a fool and letting the tv control your life
Stop being a servant to the rich and fighting their battles
Stop giving up and losing yourself in madness and drugs

Stand up!
Come on, baby,
Stand up!

Nitwit Questions of a Saturday Night

I've been haunted by a dream I had a couple of nights ago: the gist of it being that I was only waiting to die. The waiting is constant and the only aspect of being alive. Whatever else doesn't matter one whit. Only the fact of the time served. This prison of living. This life of waiting to end.

What the hell am I to make of this?

It totally blasted me into a frustrated and angry mood. What am I doing if this doesn't matter?
Does it-- really? Am I kidding?

Why the fuck would I work like a dog? Why would I waste my time in anything that isn't the most selfish and self-serving of seeking?

Why aren't I getting laid?

So I walked around today with this in my mind.

Gypsy music has helped ground me. Sexy rhythm. Singing in Hungarian. It all sounds like romance and longing. But happy, which I need right now. Evocative smile.

It's Saturday night and I just watched Love in the Time of Cholera.
Another Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterpiece. I quickly went to my bookshelf and read the first sentence from One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendi'a was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

What would it be that I would discover if I dropped the pretense of living and faced my life without fear?

Listening to Freakwater now. Twisted country twang. Shotgun fierce harmony.
"Like a piano playing faintly on the second floor
in a back room. The music seems familiar, but is not."
The Container For The Thing Contained/Jack Gilbert

There are no answers for this unsettled mood. The sky too cloudy to see the stars.

Dancing with the Thunder Beings

Dancing with the Thunder Beings

Music is calming but as empty as my hands. Sound
Hollows me to the bone. Wet green and dull light
Up in the trees. I breathe in blue.
Even a small house is immense
In loneliness. Crow flies down.
Caws. Train sound and dog barking.

I know some words about making things happen.
My dreams follow me around like a child.
My shadow cats around my bare feet
Dancing a five happiness dance.
Crow flaps her great black wings.
A storm is blowing in.

Thunder rises to dance with lightning,
Their bright words shine and fade.
Someone is shaking the rain stick.
I sing and sing. It is good to be wet
In the summer rain. It is good to
Dance with the Thunder Beings.

Shadow cats away, follows
Rain into the field and fades.
Thunder leaves talking love talk to the sky.
I dance in the wet grass, slick and muddy
Ground between my toes. Shake shake to my
Drum heart. My song rising to the stars.

9/08

Broken Rhythm Bluez

This is a good place to start. This is another beginning. Heard Return of the Grevious Angel on WDVX recently. I cannot listen to that song without thinking about my long-lost Mitch C.

I have never stopped believing in us as a true thing, even when I couldn't be true, didn't know how to stick and stay steady. I was too young to know to love beyond myself.

We made love in a raft on the Saline River one summer night and that starry lovemaking has stayed with me as the template of all lovemaking. The ten-thousands of things that I've seen and had and found and walked away from could never compare to the simple stars that floated around us in the dark water while we found such pure thrall.

I suppose we all have those times when we look back and know for sure that nothing will ever quite be the same after...

I walked away from that man twice.

Singing and not singing, crow is a disaster of noise. How is it that I'm drawn from my comfortable bed to sit at the window and wait for the inevitable fly-by, wings flapping light through the black, black feathers?

I'm needing to understand what I require for my living.
Should I go to Costa Rica?
Is it time to live alone, married or unmarried?
What is my work now? What am I meant to do?

Dreaming last night, the elevator was going down into the basement floor: I was afraid to ride down the last floor -- but I went in spite of the dread. What I found was a funeral cake and of course it was delicious, as food is after any loss.

I am afraid to go to Costa Rica, to change my life, to leave my friends and comfort and the familiar world of east Tennessee. I wonder if I will find myself stepping out of a plane into the wet heat of another place and feeling another rhythm that brings me into alignment with that land.

I will not make the best of things.
It will either feed my soul or it isn't meant for me to be there.
I will not endure as my mother did-- wishing that my father would die first so that she could have some good years alone-- and getting breast cancer in the meantime.
How should I compromise that which is my life?
What happens when I no longer have a home to come back to?

I can always:
Fly away.

(But there will be nothing left here to fly back to...)

No home
No job...

I can always:
Start over.
Build a new life.
Find a new way of being in the world.

(It is frightening and exhausting to imagine...)

My horse and crow nature, shy of new things, quick to leave, quick to gallop away.

But then...

"A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one..."
Wallace Stevens (1917)

Just my grievous fucking singing about the way things might have been, the way things might turn out. The fear in the middle.