The bird outside my bedroom window
Will not stop crying.
Screaming a name
A knife through the onion sharp night.
An avian Romeo and Juliet, writhing worm tragedy.
Breeding lousy metaphors
Between shards of shattered silence,
Like so many murmuring mosquitoes.
On a night like this,
The moon is always too bright
Stars too glittery
Lives too taut
Words too awkward
Rhythm and rhyme
Harmony and productivity
Are tuneless ariettas.
Eight minute plays
That end too soon,
or go on too long.
But edgy, chipped free verse?
Origami poetry?
Unmade beds?
Grainy videos and 3am cereal?
They work –
Tracing out a jagged discontinuous line,
A sort of naked, neon truth.
Apparently there’s a gentle flowing river out there
Comfortably clichéd
Refreshing, blue, with rounded pebbles
Upon which yellow sun drops dance
Where life is clear, healthy, organic, simple.
Indeed, insultingly simple.
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Or as bahadur shah zafar said (because you can hardly get more self indulgent than that)
“My heart is not happy in this despoiled land
Who has ever felt fulfilled in this transient world”
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