Ouchie!
I huddled close to my fire, the last defense I had set up against the coming dark.
And I stared at that rising flame's edge, hoping to see in it the image of a familiar face or worn path.
I leaned closer still, till my eyes watered and the smoke singed my nose, and stared and stared, but none came.
And where are those luminous spirits that once guided me?
And where is Andromeda now, chained in those heavenly plains?
And when did Orion leave his hunting post?
They have all abandoned me. Left me lost and lone on this cold night.
The fire died, and darkness crawled nearer. I felt its breath on my back.
It was waiting -- I was sure -- for that last coal to give up its glow.
I cupped that ember in my right, and let it burn my nerve and sinew.
I Screamed at that glowing stone. Pressed my left on it.
Begged it to take the fat of my palm and burn it for an hour more of light.
And as soon as the ember had given me its last, I fell on my stomach, eyes closed and hands clasped to my chest.
The night's creature flitted across my back, light-footed and silent, and stood by my head.
I braced and waited, but no fang in my waiting cut my flesh, and no claw marked my neck.
I turned on my back, opened my eyes, and as they adjusted to that dark, I saw -- the shy flutter of a thousand stars.
Pigeons again
Flutter! my wings, flutter! over the asphalt veins, scores of streets crisscrossed over the ground,
my father was a courier, and his father was too.
That gilded boy writing, then calling for my grandfather,
when the people of the cities threw fire at the chests of one another, and at the feet of the pines.
He gave my grandfather a paper, "I will be home soon", his solaced mother read.
And years later, when the fire had settled, and the streets perfused again the fledgeling towns.
That gilded man grinning, reading the letter my father delivered, heralding a lover's return.
Flutter! my wings, flutter! down to meet a black rope, one of many cast united over the earth like a fisher's net.
Curse that fisher that braids and ties, restless, restless, braiding and tying more and more.
He will never stop, casting his traps over the seas till no whale can bellow,
and under the skies till no angel can descend without tangling their wings.
And where should I live? And why do they call it birdseed anyway?
My grandfather lived in a pigeonhole, and now they try to pigeonhole me?
Shared some milk, they don't call it cowgrass, why?
Shared some milk with a mouse, scary fellow, though good with words.
Asked what time I think it is
/j
On the pec fly machine almost tore a muscle imagining that I'm hugging my friend
Diss
my grains are plump ... your grains are dry
I'm milling wheat ... you're brewing rye
On philosophy
I had inquired to the man on an issue that I had gone into long discussions thereof,
for 40 days I had mulled it over every man I knew and some I didn't,
with no two men agreeing, I recounted the issue to the man, and he listened,
looking over my shoulder to the middle distance,
then he said, "I will tell you no less and no more than what the wisest men of such issues have said" he said,
he looked at me, and he looked into my eyes when he said.
And that was the last of what he said.
Which way does the pigeon fall?
"Which way does the pigeon fall?" He asked me, pointing to a telephone line where stood a solitary bird. Once I sat with a friend on a couch and we dialed for pizza, he talked of pigeons and waved his hands, "which way does the pigeon fall?" he asked me, and I told him they say a tree falls the way it leans, and he agreed, "yes" he said, "A tree does, but which way does a pigeon fall" And I told him it shouldn't fall either way. "exactly, as long as it's alive it falls neither way" he said, holding up a finger to pause me as the courier knocked.