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
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
