All Right

In the hushed light

Heavy with silhouettes - 

A hot gin toddy,

Black & Tan Fantasy - 

That rupturing trumpet

Splitting the night.

It's all right.

- kc

La Libertad

A fan turns,

stirs the heavy air

that hovers low,

crawling

listlessly about the room,

spewing it’s salty breath

onto everything.

Pulsating bongo rhythms

patterned with

Spanish chanting

seep under the closed door,

slip into the bones

of two bodies

sitting immobile

on a worn-out mattress.

A single light bulb

dangles illumination

dense, unfiltered.

A paperback

with broken spine

lies open

on the swirling tiles–

circa 1970.

The silhouette of a chicken

flaps awkwardly behind the

closed curtains.

This. Nothing else. 

- kc

Pigeons

A one-legged pigeon lives on my street. There is a tiny pink stump where the second leg should be.

I often wonder how a pigeon loses a leg. It seems like a pigeon should be entirely whole or entirely dead. It's not as if a pigeon can tentatively stick a foot onto the highway and have it run over without deadly collateral damage. I haven't seen any raptors that might swoop down and snatch a pigeon by the toe. And even if there were iron-jawed pigeon traps, could a pigeon really chew through its own leg with that dull beak in order to free itself?

It has a pronounced hop instead of a waddle, but is just as fat as the others.

---------------------------------------

This week, there was an entirely dead pigeon outside the front door of my building. It had two legs.

There were no marks. No cloud of feathers. No lolling silver tongue hanging out of triangular beak. It did not appear aged or lacking in Vitamin D. It was just a supine bird, its little feet pointing towards the sky.

It couldn't have been poisoned, because all the others were fine. Thankfully, there were no others recently demised because I have no desire to live through a slightly altered version of The Plague.

A dog would have left chew marks. 

A bullet would have left blood.

I can only conclude it was a head-on collision. Cerebral hemorrhage. Coma. Death. See, some brat had sprayed ketchup or catsup on the wall of the building. Great viscous gobs.

The pigeon in question must have been hungry.

-kc

Bereft Paradox

Speechless. For months,

As the snow waned to slush and gutter water.

For months,

As agonal discord bled into nebulous guilt

And the crimson of raw regret

Mellowed with latent relief.

How does one encompass the shattering

Need for change?

The protracted grief of an

Immeasurable loss arduously chosen?

The skins of bitterness left to the wind

After a fracturing of being?

Choked by the inadequate

Effluvia of words, I inhabited

A singular silence, an owned silence,

Muteness birthed from an inexplicable void,

From a paradoxical necessity – withdrawal from

One so wholly Loved.

In the lull, the flotsam of variegated thoughts,

While a gauzy light perfused the quiet darkness,

I remained dumbstruck, for months,

Unable to conjugate a nascent fullness of breath

With the familiar wash of warmth that still occurs

When I see your face.

Incompletely complete.

 - kc