Hidden Cafes and Alleyways

A child never forgets the first mourning cry to reach their ears.

Along with the fears it pulls the sense of truth near

As they learn that everything about the world is not so clear

Astutely understanding the grand planning of never landing

But simply passing away…   

Away away away the idea of what it means to play

Simply slips away away as the adult comes to try and say

That this day will move to morrow despite the sorrow

Of waking up from hazy lazy dreams and briefly forgetting

Or rather letting your mind still thinking everything is okay

The daughter always found comfort in the silence of her father

Unlike all other silence an impregnable abyss waiting to burst

With her voice a curse that always seemingly bubbled up

In nervousness and sheepishly topsy turbiness of always

                                                                                          missing

                                                                                                                        the

                                             mark

She had a spark of madness that laid in the ocean of sadness

And the infinite ideas shooting off a million spears

Helped her find her lost ones as she looked up at the stars

And realized her loved one was not far

But rather the brightest star in the landscape of the night

She told her father about the stars and the heavens

And he always listened silently, stoic, the silence almost poe-t

Tic of calm the child found the balm, sweet relief

From the harshness of life and the constant chaos in her mind

In the cool unspoken words of those forever moments

One night the father was away on business

And there was a certain shift to this

Reality where suddenly the flap flap flapping

The tap tap tapping the rap rap rapping of

….Wings on the ceiling

The little girl was used to visions

And needed no division to convince herself this was just another

Vision of things she considered a collision of The Other

Into the human world

                                                                                          … Until the dog started barking

And the other child awoke and the little girl understood

As much as she could this this was a real bird

A little black sparrow flying around in the closed off bedroom

What do we do? Do we get the broom? No we scream for the mother

                                                                                          … Who calls another

When the father’s brother arrives you’re so rooted alive

In the hallway as he checks the room and the only thing he has to say

Is there is nothing, no black bird circling the ceiling, no dealing

With its body on the floor

                                                                                          … nevermore nevermore

But the little girl remembered when she heard the wings stop flapping

Behind the closed doors as nevermore nevermore

She found comfort in that silence too

…