BIRDS HOVER THE TRAMPLED FIELD
I saw them hiding in the yellow field, crouching low
in the varnished dark. I followed them pretending
they were me because they were. I wanted to explain
myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave
shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my
velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something’s not
right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—
living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life
is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor
I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire
disgusts me. I kissed my mouth, it was no longer
a mouth. I threw a spear at my head, I didn’t have
a head. Fox. At the throat of. The territory is more
complex than I supposed. What does a body of
knowledge look like? A body, any body. Look away
but I’m still there. Birds flying but I’m still there,
lurk there. Not just one of me but multitudes in
the hayfield. Want something to chase you? Run.
Take a body, dump it, drive. Take a body, maybe
your own, and dump it gently. All your dead,
unfinished selves and dump them gently. Take only
what you need. The machine of the world—if you
don’t grab on, you begin to tremble. And if you do
grab on, then everything trembles. I spent my lamp
and cleft my head. Deep-wounded mind, I wasn’t
doing anything with it anyway. And the birds looking
for a place to land. I would like to say something
about grace, and the brown corduroy thrift store coat
I bought for eight-fifty when you told me my
paintings were empty. Never finish a war without
starting another. I’ve seen your true face: the back
of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking.
DETAIL OF THE HAYFIELD
I followed myself for a long while, deep into the field.
Two heads full of garbage.
Our scope was larger than I realized,
which only made me that much more responsible.
Yellow, yellow, gold, and ocher.
We stopped. We held the field. We stood very still.
Everyone needs a place.
You need it for the moment you need it, then you bless it—
thank you soup, thank you flashlight—
and move on. Who does this? No one.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS
1
A man saw a bird and found him beautiful. The bird had a song inside him, and feathers. Sometimes the man felt like the bird and sometimes the man felt like a stone—solid, inevitable—but mostly he felt like a bird, or that there was a bird inside him, or that something inside him was like a bird fluttering. This went on for a long time.
2
A man saw a bird and wanted to paint it. The problem, if there was one, was simply a problem with the question. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy—series or sequence, one foot after the other—but existentially why bother, what does it solve?
And just because you want to paint a bird, do actually paint a bird, it doesn’t mean you’ve accomplished anything. Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? Who controls the lines of inquiry? We do. Anyone can.
Blackbird, he says. So be it, indexed and normative. But it isn’t a bird, it’s a man in a bird suit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, because he isn’t looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible.
Unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the paint is like looking at a bird that isn’t there, with a song in its throat that you don’t want to hear but you paint anyway.
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