A Dead Bird

A dead bird with stuck-together feathers

Dusty claws on scaly black legs clutching at the air

This dead bird weighing almost nothing

Rotted on the side where she’d been laying

A dead bird with her broken beak askew

Oddly not easily fleeing at a dog’s snuffling approach

Her eye open but glazed and empty of all its living luster

This dead bird in a grocery bag gliding toward a dumpster

A dead bird that children still cannot ever touch

Feathers no longer iridescent when pressed into the earth

The crows came quickly and spoke over top her broken body

This dead bird whose calls no one could remember

A dead bird lying down in the grass unlike any others

Surrounded by a loss of feathers amidst her snow-like down

This dead bird with a silent mate perched in some nearby tree

Lets the cold fall rain drench right through her tiny bones

A dead bird smudged and dirty like she never was before

Wing cocked up, down there in that little ditch

Floating with the runoff draining from the road

This dead bird that I see again as I lay close to sleeping

If I Was Some Artist

If I was some artist instead of some socially-waterboarded misfit fogged by chronic dull panic

I’d turn you a clay pot with designs recalling the animistic musings of your ancient ancestors

If I had the gifts and the tools and the time, well, maybe then things would be different

And I might not be so dizzy from being wrapped up and blindly rolled towards the abyss

If I could pick up a guitar and get your minds to fill in the gaps between the chords

Maybe you could look past the bent and rusty groans of my tired and wornout frame

If I were not so pathologically hurried I think I might spend time raking that Zen garden

Arranging my randomly littered inner self at last into harmonious parallel curves

If I was some artist bringing order to chaos and distilling an aching beauty from tragedy,

These other selfish emotions might just stop choking and blinding and tripping me up

If I was even a bit gifted and not so damn tone deaf, ham-handed and ignorant to color and form

I would make images exactly as I release those perfect bubbles when I swim underwater

If I were not still so lamely hung up, off in some irrelevant, wasted and trivial past,

I might be granted a mature vision uniting all this vast and random, unsortable rubble

If I was a soothsayer resplendent in mystic robes, I’d hold a cosmic mirror up to our faces

But as it is, I cannot knead my trivial past into the required consistency to spin any tales

If I had the voice in any one of its forms, I’d lay it upon you with humility and grace

So now you can see why I appear to look through you, staring blankly, off into space

If I could just pop my head back up, out of my ass, maybe I would even open my eyes once again

Still…it’s simply not right to have to bet on a miracle just to ensure one’s simple daily survival

If I was some artist coming through from a trance like a musing psychic medium,

I would also know how to go about it being quiet, gentle, self-effacing and kind

If I could free my arms and legs, stand up and just catch my breath for an instant

Just maybe I might titrate small scenes of order from out this roiling and implacable chaos

If I were a pilgrim all like grimy from long and deprived wandering in faraway foreign lands,

The truth that might heal us could have accidentally lodged somewhere upon me

If I was not simply a lesser among all the equals, shambling along right behind you

I would split this blinding glare prismatically into separate rays of the rainbow of truth

If I were a prophet, maybe with a long beard and those terribly piercing black eyes,

Rational followers would weave my ramblings together into pithy and valuable insights

If I was some leader with a unifyingly-clear vision, perhaps I too could stay upon message

But sadly I just add more static to this wack, cacophonious conundrum of confusion

If I was some Buddha, all like serene and composed, meditating beneath the sacred Bodhi tree

Gestures would be simplified, words would be superfluous and writing unnecessary

All my lessons would be imparted from the beatific smile playing across my unlined face

But as it is there is little truth in the tracks the dirty tears have smeared down my hollow cheeks