The Birds

The birds they call, they call my name.

They have called me to explain,
my absence for the month of June,
May and every other day.

My ineptness they’ve laid plain.

A man with coins,
a man with few.
I can’t recall the story.
With no coins left and no defence,
I listen to them calling.

These messengers of God they say,

you’re the one who wasted your stay,
whose coins never saw the light of day.
So much you could have given
yet you always went astray.

Life was hard

and coins could buy
numbness for my soul,
darkened doors
always called,
while grace just let me go.

Not so, not so, not so, they sing,

these messengers of God.
Grace was in the morning.
Grace was in our song.
Grace was in the dewy grass.
In every baby’s cry.
We saw you, saw you, saw you pass us by.

Pass you by I did, I say,

my passions all fired up.
Babies cry before they die
and mornings never come.
Grace did not fill my cup.

The messengers were quiet now.
I believed that I had won.
They left me with a last retort
that ended our exchange.

Though life is sad and dark, they said,
an end comes to it soon.
For you now something else remains:
eternity that looms.

 

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell - By Marty McConnell

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses.
you make him call before
he visits. you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

Website of Marty McConnell

1618

I found without looking or looking away
a ticket stub from the day we caught the train.
I can only think of what we buried day.
The words have been washed, washed away.

Paper orange, crumpled and vague.

I can still make out the Chinese display.
That train left at 9:16, the number 1618
marked the time, the date.

Off to Taichung.

We occupied seat 11B.
We never saw ourselves again.
So long, 1618.

The 18^th of the second month of 2012.

Insert this way
Regards
Taiwan High Speed Rail

 

A wish to depart

Once I have slipped
into obscurity,
I order you
not to remember me.

I prohibit you to entertain me

anywhere in your head.
No dreams.
No nightmares.

You are to consider me:
Dead

Saved

I once was drowning
in a sea of pearly white.
Little word-shaped logs
floated to the surface.

They saved my life.