May I borrow your wing on the wind;
I’d like a different perspective, a little yesterday,
because the selection I have is too personal.
Earth-bound and clumsy, freedom is feathered
black against cotton and clairvoyance.
To rat-a-tat messages with a Morse code beak
along walls and windows
maybe even a chamber door just to send
paranoid delusions swarming into skies
filled with blue and bruise and sleek glossy
plumes beating the breeze with death
or the life of your choosing.

I long for that and all that comes tapping
in sugary sprinkles lined with silver,
turn eyes overhead at the forecast; no luck,
no rain, no superfluous visions from above
and still, I’m sprawling blind—nested too close
to be rusty at eating seeds or worms
(whichever is easier to swallow)
any suggestion as to the preparation is welcome.
Are you still there, my fire,

still bleating under floorboards
and making me sweat? Confess all,
Tell-Tale:
that I have murdered a bird, swept
under rug way too many lint balls to justify
or whatever the crime. May it haunt me
in pencil shavings or you in hand cramps—
both get curled up in the end
on the last page: you, me
and all that damned squawking.

Can we just start over again, again, again
because I’m just not getting it right.
It looks like French curves swerving
around the Corvus, fan-tailed or not.
Please, help. Even if it means
pecking my carrion fingers. Please.
Let me bleed away the pulp
and alight imagination.