here's another old one. Comments are welcome.

For the Birds

Proud as a peacock, green-blue eyes
exploding – feathers flying
over Olympus, you and me –
heavenly bodies in motion.

Tonight I will lose myself –
fingers tripled, tongue,
heart, damaged mind
-in you.

Please
take good
care of them.

Proud as a peacock, you know
how to crush mountains,
Hera’s hands moving
like wind wielding
sand, blasting stone to
fragments. My old walls
are Troy’s embers blowing from beaches
to sink into oceans
of white foam – Your one girl army
will sail west
with me still on the shore.
Mercy. Tonight, your nails
ask divine questions
in my back. Our tongues transmit
letters without language.
Tonight our smoke
will fill hillside temples
and kiss the lips of heaven.

Tonight we’re together,
proud as peacocks, majestic cockatoos
singing songs without melody,
strutting without rhythm.

Punishment. Proud as peacocks, between two suns
we rend tapestries and restring
the loom with threads of our hair –
auburn and midnight, warp and weft.
Which Fate wove a Penelope delay into
my heart’s oddyssey? Casual expectations
are your Artemis arrows that slay
all hopeful suitors.

Proud as a peacock, I built black wings
with spit and flightless feathers –
Will I rise like your
followers’ smoke sacrifices
floating fast from hillside temples
burning with the desire to please you?
Do I own an Icarus’s fate –
to rise on makeshift wings to kiss your
Phoebus chariot and explode like Greek fire?

Proud as a peacock, I know I am
a Sisyphus fool, clever
enough to delude himself
that he could cheat death.
Hades’ hand will strike foul feathers
from my back. Man was
not meant to fly.
From tonight til the
tomorrow after eternity,
I will walk over dead soil,
the hills at my feet.
10/25/04