39 - Suburbia, and Every Home a Lighthouse

Houses under a moon are vague.

In dim pulses, restless ghosts aether beat against windows

making us omen-readers all, who pass them on return

from day labor to this necropolis of light.

Somewhere in fabled despondence this scene

was a metaphor of exclusion; the bright interior

outside me, and thought warm, full.

But domestic glow correlates with nothing definite, save

for these soft adulteries with easy feelings

against a frigid night’s withholding.

The spirits are opaque, as blinded windows

and I discover my longings in the meaningless Morse

of TV lights, practiced as a hotline psychic

at embellishing eager leads.

I live in a broad circle, this its paranoid nadir —

the bright, regular pulses so much like a signal

made for a passenger of dark, heart sparked

to the meaninglike contrast that cloaks its own

being nothing in particular.

31 - So Insulting, So Enlightened

One year, my sister and I

subjected Christmas mythology

to empirical testing.

“Sign here,” scrawled on

cardstock, “if you, Greenie

the Wonder Dog, who we love

so so much, are truly real.”

Then a hand-dotted line,

the length of a linchpin.

Folded over, addressed,

blessed with a gold star sticker,

scotch-taped to the pebbly wall

above the obligatory cookies.

We’d play the powers that be like

cheap psychics fed false

leads on how to flatter us best.

Come morning, bypassing presents

we opened the card to find

our stepfather’s scrawl

dyslexically confirming

the existence of a recently

invented flying dog.

We frowned a little at the gifts,

realizing they had been sacrificed

to the idols of magical thinking.

We both got just what we wanted.

30 - Passer Aux

God fell the morning we kids found

a baby starling on the lawn.

Stepping close cat-softly

our gasping pupils gulped

the light off thick grass

swelled with verdant juice,

arrogant to outdo the absurdity

of a bird in the dirt. Everything

was strange. I pictured

his feet black roots, feathers

shoots and fronds of night

and scattered white seeds

for planting flight in Earth.

But silent, hurt, and sunk in

adolescent bloat his downy

starscape a wilt of absent heaven,

stolen on the descent.

Order: passeriforme, passeri

same as those penny-sparrows who

never fall without the Father.

We tucked the little aeronaut

into a shoebox bed and blanket,

cradled as the car flew to

wherever white-gloved

ministers could right this

blot on invincible birdhood.

We couldn’t stay to see

if he would fly again, though

they all smiled nicely

in that lying way.

Who is responsible for flight?

Where does it go when birds die?

De passer à travers ma vie,

passer aux oubliettes,

mes passereaux infinie.