watterson

on birds, flight, and oil slicks

"Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far. Far far away from here."

We are still star-signed, telescope eyed,
cosmic creatures with our faces to the sky,
launching far flung flights
and tossing Hail Mary shuttles into the cosmos.

And Icarus has melted into the ocean,
and DaVinci has made paper wings,
and the Wright Brothers have crashed
their shaky test flights on whisper breaths,
but the birds lift skyward like a dream.

And in our desperate attempt for mimicry,
to taste that untraversed terrain:
the cool sky, the blue air.
To be birdlike, we have twisted
hollow bones into steel skeletons,
swift beaks morph into tasteless machinery,
soft nature engineered into calculated architecture.

Guzzle gulping gasoline, need for speed,
we featherless bipeds unsatisfied with crusty
terra, mad for atmospheric rush and g force,
dig for earth blood and spill it across the ocean.

Drenching white feathers with petrol stains,
we fly on stolen wings.

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apr 1, 2017
hi, it's april nanowrimo and this year i'm trying to write a poem a day because i'm CRAZY & living life on the edge. everything is a first draft, so don't expect anything spectacular because i definitely have my expectations as low as a limbo bar.