Omen?

From the Dryer Vent

I’ve bitched about them for days,
their chirping an offkey song
nest of sparrow hatchlings
behind the cover of our dryer vent

With all that crap in there
the clothes won’t dry
we’re wasting electricity!

But this morning
stepping out for a bowl
of Jamaican Rum tobacco—
a dead chick
covered in tiny ants
like men plundering a whale 

Why should I feel guilty;
I didn’t wish their death;
merely wanting for clean laundry,
and this bird dead
unclothed and silent now
of its urgent chirping need—
a feast for ants.

David M Pitchford
13 May 2009

I Bleed Free

I Bleed Free

There’s no point in any argument, I bleed guilt
like any man guilty of what you indict me for

Is your judgement just? Or just judgement?
Through what bias do you convict me?

I bleed grief and tears, I bleed red lust
for life; I bleed need of true friends.

I bleed free of this tortured life,
offer myself for sins you imagined.

David M Pitchford
8 April 2009 – 8 May 2009

Even in Blackest Night the Moon Shines

Even in Blackest Night the Moon Shines

And yet on her far side, colder, darker,
I languish unrequited . . . not because
she will not; because she cannot. What cause
might so humble our closest and starker
queen of night? What past sin could so darken
that child, stillborn and screaming, deep within
her tragic soul. She bites—part of us dies

and yet the sun reflects beyond the earth
to light one slight part of mother moon, whether
slivered just beyond earth’s haloed shadow,
or covered from human sight by quilted clouds,
such that even in blackest night she shines
somewhere in herself, of herself, and yet
ever interdependent with sun & earth.

David M Pitchford
11 February 2009 – 8 May 2009

Quick Note

A Quick Note

a friend writes in a quick note
that “we all” want me to be rid of the sorrow
my mind lunges quickly toward the false rhyme of “hollow”
which is what I think I should be
were I suddenly purged of sorrow
but I know, doubtless, that this is false
as the rhyme of sorrow and hollow
which leads me to the next false rhyme of shallow
which I oftentimes wish I were
but this too is false, aslant of Truth

“I am what I am,” pipes in Popeye
on a breath redundant with spinach
strong as hurricane winds and waves
tumbling over floodwalls nowhere I know
at this moment, yet not so long ago . . .

Sorrow is my dearest friend
standing here beside me all my life
never to desert or betray me—

but perhaps this is another rhyme out of tune
perhaps sorrow has been the demon on my shoulder
all these years whispering obscene
and absurd lies into my subconscious . . .

David M Pitchford
26 April 2009