Crowquill -

Nothing’s so lucid as the promise of dreams

But these pills we found just make me sleep

There’s nothing quite so pure

As the written word, my dear, so let’s have ourselves a little poem

Until the will to speak loses urgency

Our animal indecency

Until the will to speak loses urgency

In print is so blase

It’s about the bell tower, at the golden hour

Angel of the spires climbs her steel cage staircase spine

Angle of desire

Ascend the wrought iron

One by one, wrung by wrung

Is it the rising roof line that makes me feel so swallowed whole?

Or the way my body barely pricks the sky?

The same

As a century’s worth of virgin’s blood

That’s passed through my longing veins, scheming

To convince my aching mind

That pleasure’s got nothing on the miracle of need

Nothing’s so purile as meter and rhyme

When you can’t see the ground from that ledge

And this perch is so far, far from the nest

Gravity doesn’t grant me the privilege of failure

My bough never breaks, I don’t stumble into anything

So I climb and I carve my initials in the bark

With that feather I found, but it’s all so contrived

And my genes didn’t bless me with the foresight of a sage

But I know how this will end, in apologies and ink on the page

A slowly constructed crow quilled confession

Of my spirit to all of you, black waterproof ink scars the board

Black waterproof ink scars the board

So hot-pressed, pristine and pure

A slowly constructed manifestation of to tremble

As base as a bridge in a song

And less like the poem that I promised you

Nothing’s so lurid as haiku-d'etat

On sidewalks in white outlined chalk

All I’ve got is this ink smeared line

With our voices in harmony

The offering of a crow quilled threnody