fight or flight? at the end of the day I'm still the bird.

He Chose to Fly

I made a nest with cradled palms extended.
I gently wrapped a bird inside.
I tried to carry him to safety
But he broke me and claimed the sky.

A short-lived flight, he ascended and then sputtering fell,
Kamikaze in acrobatic descent,
the pavement now left him floundering.
I stood at a distance,
paralyzed with bewildered sadness,
Knowing I had tried to save him,
but was now horrified witness to his last flight.
I became the undertaker unbeknownst.
Unable to end the suffering,
lifting him up,
then leaving him to die.
I became the accomplice to his final attempt at life.

Why did he fly?
Did I scare him?
Were my hands foreign and thus fear forced his flight?
I was gentle as I gathered him.
I saw a sort of trust in his little red eyes.
A helplessness that comes from knowing there is no other option than to trust.
He didn't try to fight me but rather fit quite perfectly in my hands.
I had no idea that he would try to escape them.
Why did he fly?
Was it in lifting him up, that I gave a sense of height and courage which compelled him to try?
And as he ascended skyward, did he know it was his last act of inherent aviary glee?
Did he believe for a moment, as he surveyed the parking lot,
that he was going to be okay?
Or did he know this was his last time at height,
measured out in moments and broken wing flaps.

Why did he fly with broken wing?
I should have held him tighter.
I should have kept him close to the ground.
I should have just taken him home and clipped his wings but saved his life.
But instead, he chose to fly.
And I had no choice,
but to let him.
Fly.
One.
Last.
Time.

We are Books

All the ones I want to read are already reading someone else.
And I'm certain you're no exception to this literary rule.
And yet, you are here and I can't help but take you off the shelf.
I want to open these bookends and let my eyes run rampant on the pages of time.
But for now I am simply lost in your eyes barely blinking.
Open and shut,
without missing a word, I read.
Like pages I turn at the end of a riveting chapter,
you pull me along and draw me in.
I wake with you on the mind.
A plot subconsciously developed all night long.
You, the merely unknown to me,
lay beside me now in bed, not far from my own clasped hands,
not far from my own cinematic head.
You, the book still resting on my pillow
Where your image gently fell last night,
when i fell asleep a little past 1.
a little past chapter 1,
I closed my eyes.
You're new to me but locked away within these linen sheets is a story with much to read.
Skin of supple leather holds the story, binds you.
binds me.
Holds more than what meets the eye,
as words often do.
I'm lost somewhere between page 10 and infinity.
But this is the story of my own life, also.
Caught in between...
Learning the contours of story lines and laugh lines and lifelines,
written long before there was you
and long before there was me.
I'm trying not to narrate this daytime dreaming, but I've always got poetics on the mind.
And I can't help but wonder if stories will be more and more interwoven
as the Cosmic Poet draws us out in curves and lines,
with limbs overlapping and plosives on the lips.
I am a word with definitions waiting to be defined.
Rest me on the pages of these thoughts, scratch me on the walls of your mind.
Rest me like a pen between pointer and thumb,
hard pressed with firmness of desire.
Rest me between sheets of paper, half-scripted with everyday lines.
Rest me in your body of words.
Your body of works.
Rest your story next to mine.

The Epic of Everyday Loss (A Collection of Thoughts)

Cast away guilt
but affection still resides.
the heart is not convinced
of such a myth
as you've led me to believe
as I've grown to believe.
to laugh
to eat and drink
to talk deeply
and to sleep inside
and yet to do all this with a detached definition of love.
You were my grand experiment
in non-attachment.
And my defiant freedom failed me somewhere between the sheets
between the streets as we pedaled our bikes in city revelry
between the notes of music and the pause of words.
In sunshine and in spitting rain
the midnight windshield---a playground for animated blades
a canvas where streetlights and stoplights
mix with the shimmer of water droplets
as you led us on a whirlwind tour of the city-- both day and night.
Somewhere in the middle of all this I loved you.
I never could admit it until recently
it seemed so silly,
so premature for such a weighty word as this.
but I've come to realize it's true.
I'm a massive failure at non-attachment
and it turns out my heart isn't as hard as I thought it was after all these years of lamenting a truer love lost.
I will never tell you this.
You'd never understand.
You'd look at me with a far off glance-- somewhere between disdain and bland confusion.
You were an artist's imposter parading around in sheep's wool.
what do you know of the clouds and the sky and a way greater than yourself?
And yet, your mark remains upon me.
The way your memories are still unwelcomed guests in this sacred space of the mind.
Are we truly the masters of our own heart
can we oust unwanted thoughts?
If so, then I am the doorkeeper
standing ajar, allowing you to still reside.
I understand how one can love a broken-winged bird in a matter of minutes,
Or how a kind trajectory of the eye can take one deep inside,
But who continues to love the thorn
if for no other reason than to remind them
that they are yet alive.
I do.
And somewhere in this heart, I guess I still want to love.
So
I will.
until i no longer have room for
all the memories you don't even know you left behind.

The Epic of Everyday Loss (A Collection of Thoughts)

to wake
and then to fall again into your own warmth
Five icy toes sliding up a half-hewn forest.
these long monkey arms were made for wrapping around this island I suppose.
solitary affections to keep company until the nighttime movies are ready to go.
masterpiece of the mind,
cued up and ready,
synched with breath
flickering behind the drawn curtains
which now mask the windows to the soul.