a poem should be
wordless
as the flight of birds.
Archibald Macleish, Ars Poetica.
birds dont sing
in their flight
for them flying is a muse
they compose mid-air
weave agnostic verse
sneering haughtily at our absurdity
as they float over our meaningless mosques
and churches
and those patrolled international borders
and other disputed sites
where the guns go bang bang bang all the
time
they swing over there losing their birdegos
(ego is difficult to retain in mid-flight)
wondering about and watching men plucking
out
and quashing the lives of other men and
women and
poor helpless children and they
shed a birdtear or two from there
a birdtear that is lost midway due to heat
of some explosion
down below some crazy fanatical bomb detonating
killing instantly the people and the city
and the forests
and even the pitiable babybirds who are
yet to learn to fly
they contemplate of writing poems
about a birds egg charring
before even being boiled and scratch their
beaks
unsure if this is a metaphor or simile or
other poetic device
o the birds have lots and
lots and lots to write about
o their writings will never be banned
they borrow freedom
to write poems in the sky
they come back and
pass it on to us
we take the song only
brutally
but at least we take the song
to take the poem
to unscramble the words from the song and
to put it back again
as song so spontaneously that it remains
the poem and the song
to remember forever this refrain whose melody
haunts us
and to hum that refrain which preserves
our sanity
perhaps we need to fly
a trifle aimlessly like birds
or because we are humans
six-sensed creatures with massive egos
and massive superegos and massive egos on
the ego
and because of possessing gray matter
what doctors call medulla oblongata
we need to feel with our red hearts
than think with some unlocatable mind
we need to look deeper. .
.
into ourselves, into eyes
we need to lose ourselves
then, and only then
the poems will come
silent
wordless
as the flight of birds
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