1. allure

I am leaving now
indrawn to swim in your sky
I place my pale face over the dark bird
you have shown me but I cannot hide
it shows through
hovering between my eyes
to lure your flight after me

but I am flightless now
I crumble when I set for take-off
I taste one tear yet I am bloodless
I want to fly after your feathered dance
but I, nailed and column-shoved, cannot
escape my corset of familiars
I lure you to carry me by beak

2. questions

not mine but blue beak of dream so open
above our heads you cannot see beginning or end
imagine it enormous outside the frame
we float in its open mouthed hunger
all my poise and stare at you cannot hide
that I am swallowed in it put your head into deep
blueness beside mine touch my hair it is all wing

I want to trust your blueness blue inviter but
what earthly chokes and swallows
I possess I see outside the frame
with our best wingspans
but I convinced of civil battles am earthbound
I lessen with your determination and salute you
your strength does not become my weakness frail I go

3. pursuit

you can't hear me anymore I've gone below this sky
thin line of ocean's indication invites to soothe
pain set into silent landscape horizon's closed lips
from eye to mouth your tear I brush by wing
another drop to oceans depth from unseen islands
I have not yet told you where I stand
where I've leapt from even as I am so impaled

my perfect vision cannot see your perfect flight
you've escaped me like sifted words forgotten
my perfect breasts are bound to find you
in this unround world which you've disowned
I stand here gainfully positioned to take on new life
I need you back with strong direct seduction
why invisible behind below beyond our oceanline

4.hush

I will paint you anew can you take it you do not scare me
even uncountable piercings become ordinary
acceptable as you stare knowing you cannot touch me
I will ask you flat to forget and give me each point irretractably
microtonal oblivion come to smile collect remove oscillate
reconstruct now that you have succumbed to play out this residue
your hand held over my hidden years hushes my invisible bird

I bite my back to chew the anguish and crack my neck by tilting
yes with you I take new life now I embrace this time it throbs
you reveal thin sheets of my discomfort with wet and weighty pain
I mock ceiling fans in their one-direction prison as I inhale your lofty message
I answer all of your decisive intuitions with black beads of perching downtime
my intention is not to hush you but to form stained-glass alliance with your breastplate
I leave my signature by blood but not in blood for you to know my true name

5. merge

It's in the white sweep of cloud you'll find me
lowered there where in love of life no hush but rising swells unseen to where
nested song of endless out of and beyond our perching
blinding prismed sound of colored form is sunset's dawn
it covers pain but cannot hide what source of unseen flower I will wear for you
waterfalled from my hair no end it's sprung blood red and called resilience
lift on see beneath the film for what is there is passion's name

What beauty you bestow upon me I am beauty with you
So black youÂ’re blue with falling moonlight clouds and petals all around
We are the same are we not in identity thought and darkness
We pose a promise to each other and not a threat in birdform
We take brief sabbaticals in praise of our long journeys
I offer all of me and not just part of me for us to merge
We become one long eyebrow yes we do of fashion fancy fight and flight

6. joyful

your darkest winged sight from dreamed unknown
of shimmered heads our pounded selves this body is my night
stars scatter starkly in their glow
make constellations stanzas dark thought realized
art to art joint browed pain dissolved mist rapt resolute
I take you into dream unbroken how can we explain
fallen dove's reflective dual passion's beak to mirrored beak
opened whitened feathered fall to joyful emptiness

your song by swollen aperture shoots daggers pierced
with stolen girlhood in this reservoir of memories with madness
mirror blooms our bathtub I succumb to strings like veins
your ingestion of my exhalations proves alluring follows oneness
bait you when you hold your breath I catch you fullsurprised
I wriggle through your oily coat lie inside you fit for lifetime
oxmate rumbles broken earth we blend our frozen flight for liftoff
then land together flame-winged softly grounded in our broken column

11/29/2007

Author's Note: My italic stanzas begin each verse, followed by David's.
This collaboration began when David invited me to write with him, sending a picture of Frida Kahlo's painting "The Broken Column" as the generating inspiration. We wrote back and forth in email, with swift intensity of response to this powerful work. We are naming the painting rather than posting it here, as it is a strong physical image, boldly depicting pain, her body set upon a broken column, her figure pierced with many nails. You may be surprised that there is no bird pictured directly in the painting, but her joined dark eyebrows look like a dark bird in flight and also we imagined an even larger bird, in flight "outside the frame". We are posting a link to the painting so you may choose to view it or not. Kahlo herself wrote: ‘Waiting with anguish hidden away, the broken column, and the immense glance, footless through the vast path … carrying on my life enclosed in steel … If only I had his caresses upon me as the air touches the earth.’ Frida suffered childhood illness and a terrible accident that affected her greatly her whole life. When a leg finally had to be amputated, she wrote: ‘Feet, what do I want them for if I have wings to fly?’

Posted on 11/30/2007
Copyright © 2024 Kathleen Wilson