Beginning to Fly

The sky is winter
Wyoming wind wailing
Nestled in the purple
Choking vacuum of forever
All the air drawn and quartered out
I am its broken accordion
with torn bellows
I hear a b minor chord
faintly playing from the chest
of my dead Dad, lying on his back
Cold frozen light illuminates
his gazeless face
like the fading phosphorescence
of an old black and white
TV screen turned off
I kiss his cheek and regret
hating him for hitting me,
For all of the stupid shit
For all the things I’m sure
we’d have patched up
And for wishing
I’d be more of a man
like my brother

I finally snapped
out of my midnight daze
Rain beading down the windows
in the back of a dark ambulance
the EMT said I just had a seizure
I didn’t believe them
Miscast magicians holding
the ace of spades,
my dove heart and IV
In one hand while
making me reappear
In the other
after and before
the puff of smoke
and whorl of overdose
still wafting from a
strangers big glass dick
filled with smack
and god knows what else
in the back of his Chevelle

My heart landed between my legs
And my brain crashed close by
Watching from behind eyes
swept under the black asphalt
Detached and trapped behind
a whiskey bottle helpless
as my pistil forced and taken
wide open by his shiny gun
buried in my back
I prayed to God
to pull his stinger out
and stop raping me

but he never did


I pick up a baby
sparrow and set it
back in the nest
tho’ still young
next time it falls
it will know
to spread
its wings
and fly away.