the catch all black of midnight birds

i hate these night-birds.

dark water songs that trill

and fill the air i am breathing and so

i am soon full of black lung water and so

i am full of bird droppings and my eyes

have scales like the clicking of their feet

as the lids flutter fast and the lashes meet

there are places in the nighttime where

healthy persons do not acknowledge

there are blood- cracks on the ice lake where

children ice skate and you must not dance

by this i mean the suffering never ends
over that part of the lake you must not

these are the bird shapes that claw

their way through my chest when they

sing at night, dark breasted babies

in nests open mouthed in trees

perch on the limb and sing to him

i have the midnight disease: i am afraid

i am trying to work

sing song irrevrant and uglybeautiful

on the clean black scale of midnight

they sing up and down the line

they are Mozart eyed and Bach brained

lilting and lifting and crooning

when there is no sunlight? no light?

the cage is the darkness and the birds

are the broken ones and they sing

to make me remember the broken.

i am still and frozen in the catch all

black, do not want to feel your

whisper wings on my skin. do not

want to break your hollow bones

do not want to hear your strange songs

i am making sentences i am singing words

i flutter my hands toward where you might

be, hoping to scare you away

in the darkness the flash of my white hands

and fingers make the shapes of singing birds

maggie may ethridge