Tag Archives: learning

apples

scarecrow,
you cruel bastard.
you never scared the birds away.
the little sparrows used to line up
on your tattered jacket sleeves
and they’d sing into your false ear.

they should have been frightened.

I had a field of fruit trees.
I put you in there, amongst
the bright green granny smiths.
they were mine. they were mine.
the birds weren’t interested, but
acid poured out of your rotting guts of straw

it burnt holes in my crops.

you did not do your job,
you cruel bastard.
you did not protect my apples at all.
apples are not supposed to bleed
but my neat orchard was broken
and awash with a clotted red river.

you were not the last, either.

I got better at making scarecrows
no thanks to cruel bastards
or bad fruit that stewed on my tongue.
I don’t need a cruel blue doll
like you around any more.
I have covered the orchard with electric nets.

the birds die, but they come anyway.

sky

it hurts to look up to the sky
into that deep
perfect infinite blue of the universe
why do my eyes ache in the light?
I wait for an answer,
and turn towards it anyway.
the power of victim is strong
and sticky,
but I know
as the sun wrings tears from my eyes
that it is not more than the
power of truth.
the power of perfect is strong
and incorrect.
a vision of material attainment
burns holes in my soul –
and that is just,
despite the child’s protestations of
need and want and why.
new beliefs are delicate like
virgin shoots from the ground
and the galaxy eyes of newborns.
and samely, bring the deep
joy of reality.
I am still healing,
still connecting to the gratitude strand
that ties the experiences of cruelty together.
without loss
I could not be me
and the time that I screamed against
all that I was
is over.
into the stars, or the sky, or the eyes of
newborns, the fresh shoots of spring
or the dying leaves of winter;
I allow the ache in my eyes,
and I live.

new

I stood at the door to my new life
full of fear and tears
so desperate to find the key
under the piles of newspapers from 2004
that littered my desk
the smell of brass was a taunt
from morning til night,
knowing it was so close to my hand
but still lost.
then he came and shook me
awake at two in the morning
opened my eyes
“I am just
like you.
the papers are yours
they don’t belong to god
so get a
fucking move on”.
I found my key
and I walked into the
world that had been waiting
for me
I in my rarity and he in his
reminding each other that
our gifts of perception
are not gypsy’s curses.
my friend,
thank fuck for you
and here’s to our health.
my brother,
you’re more than a diamond
in a sea of glass shards