The King Of Nails

The king of nails is out standing in his field.

The headlights pass street signs,

But they're all different,

I trickle my eyes back towards the road,

then I see him. 

The straw of his hat peeking pass its silhouette

My car curves past the bend, 

I could smell his breath,

the window half down,

between a sieve and a shell.

 

This couple at the bar are yelling over the crowd and I hear it:

"Not all birds can fly."            

I tell the story at the house, and we get back to talking.

My chin has stubble, and the creak in the stairwell match it

Lapse in attention, the center becomes the edges,

The floor becomes the house.

And an immobile, brutish bird,

Born in a nest tethered and tarred,

Joints lathered with a thick fog,

And spider webs adorning its imagination, 

Its survival is a tragedy of some proportion.

I see the sound, and wonder,

How many more ways until it's over.

I'm walking there, on the side of the road

Twigs and loose gravel tear my feet,

my skin is unaccustomed and tender. 

A cinematic view breaking through the streetlights

A thank you note written on my sleeve

There's a lesson hiding in the night

Like a deserts regrets concerning water.

This cassowary, this dodo, this emu

must be a testament of treatment.

Is there a reason they were given wings?

Is this empty night, of murmuring robins and silent wings,

our evolutions stasis?

A bottleneck can be a destination.

I gaze at the moon and agree;

Its a careless sloven sculpture.

Each house I slept in 

Was like the moral in a story,

Told in ambivalent voices, and drenched in melancholy.

I lie patient on the floor, my eyes shut

Counting every aching reoccurrence.

I'm taking my doctors advice,

I will be less earnest, and will eat more carrots.

I sit in the waiting room, 

Flipping through all the magazines, 

It came without surprise when I read, 

"Flightless birds almost always live on islands."

The in joke now, is that reunions 

Are an exercise in dull surprises,

I keep on glancing up at the skyline, murky, gray and constant.

I nod and smile,

But I wish there was a a keeled breast for me, 

to keep me full

to cover the gap, 

to shoulder the load.

The king of nails must have been born in a parking lot.

I close door with a thud, I named it eternal reoccurrence,

And head home where the sky is sovereign and open.