SIXTY-SEVEN STORKS
Sixty-seven storks came before you were born, the cigognes of Aubonne. One nested on our roof. My name's 23, she said. She was huge, six feet or more from tail to beak, wing to wing. Her feathers were white that contained every colour. Her wing tips were ink black like the mother of all birds. She cocked her head to speak, a clash, crack and clattering of the long red swords - her beak. in a mix of machine gun and morse, she said she'd bring a boy in winter, now she didn't stay in Africa, but in the full landfills of Spain. The boy will have red plumage, with dots on a face of frost. Our own faces were touching, me stretched out the skylight with 23's bill poking in scouring for moles and voles. I’m not even peckish, she said, reading my mind, your lizards are to die for/ He'll be soft and so strong and not often wrong. She retreated her beak. a soft touch of wing on bill to say her goodbye – but stopped as coolly as she flies and said - oh, by the nests, later there will be a girl, dogged and half horse, half human. This time she did retreat – gracefully of course – but not before one last clonk: I'll carry them always over rising seas and wild forests to find heaven in the too-hot human hell.
Notes: cigonne is French for stork. Aubonne is a village in western Switzerland.
FOUND
She allowed me to go,
but I never arrived.
I had fire in my belly,
I went door to door,
to every club in the city.
And I found my heart spilled.
On the night
I was killed.
I was found naked –
in just a teddy boy
coat – in the meeting
house lane. They came
in fours or fives, the blue girls,
and stared and shrugged.
On the morning
I was found.
Propped up,
among the dock leaves
lining the cobble stones,
I watched them prod
and photo me. Saw
them look past me.
On the morning,
I was found.
I’m shining in the sun.
Before – I’d hide in the flat
or, if she sent me out,
I’d blink and squint,
and girls would heckle
at my shorts and freckles.
In the summer,
she prowled.
“Party boy found dead” –
“Nude and assaulted”.
No one saw, no one spotted.
Y-cut, waked, satin cushion,
in my only suit in a pine coffin.
Only magpies mourning.
When I was fed,
to the ground.
MURDER OF CROWS
Black-suited, black-hatted men,
coat tails flapping, on all-black bikes
– no helmets, gears, gear, lanes.
Septuagenarians, they sweep
along country roads like old crows.
At dusk they silhouette the sky –
riding, roding woodcocks.
Now, as elastane peacocks preen,
those cocks and crows are dodos.
ENOUGH
I am enough.
I am as eyeless as a cave tetra.
But I am enough.
I sprout cactus glochidia.
My arms are rail tracks of harm.
I creep day to day through my one life.
I am enough.
I swallow eights pills a day.
They pump volts through me.
I flinch and squirm though an infinite
sea of inflating universes.
I am not enough.
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