Chicagoetry: Men Made Out Of Birds

MEN MADE OUT OF BIRDS

Behold the Birdman: dove feathers, black eyes, wine-red tail.
Belligerent as the garish sun, Jove-bound to make war.
His cold, dove blood hums. Then, dove-white, lightning strikes.
Blonde smoke billows, black doves dive, then die.
The flock of his body flings mercilessly, hissing.
What pain is his mother? What rain fangs the bleak eyes?
This is the rain that flecks black eyes: the last lust of American Mars.
Thus solitary, and like a widow thus. Cold, light blood. Red stars, plum stars.
Old, cold light. The black blinking sky: cacophony of war widows.
War: rain burns and blood reigns. He taught a tree to see and it learned.
This is the pain that mothers lust. He set a bee free and it burned.

Amplest of Nations, King of Provinces, still in the night he weeps.
Perfidiously his friends have dealt, and are now enemies. Bleak smoke
Shields now the fiends. Bleak might of Jove! Shark bone beak! Black widows

Shriek.

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J. J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He can reached at jjtindall@yahoo.com. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.