blank blank fullness

There's a bird in my neighborhood
He bangs on my windows
Every day last week he would alight
Onto my fire escape, peering in
He going for the plants?
I'd wonder
He'd see me
And fly away
I'd leave the room
back crashing again
Higher up, through to the clear glass
Trying to fly past the curtains, perhaps
Hitting
His little
bird body
again
and
again
I opened the window
To let him in
He didn't come back
Until tomorrow came with a

bang
bang

Originally posted here

Listening....

   Midnight Rain by thetopofmymind

I prefer things to spring naturally, found where they are needed, which usually means there's an element of surprise. Initial incongruency. Though if I were to be completely honest, this makes me shades of uncomfortable. I spent the day aimless. Wandering. Scheduled and then needed no longer. The vague plan of my life dissolved, I had my hand unoccupied. I did not decide. Found near a museum, I decided and entered. Of all the things, this was unexpected. But a perfectly natural recourse for my seeking some sort of refuge. The Hilton housed a yoga conference. Boatloads of women in corporate culture yoga wear. Frustrating. Sterile. Yet a sense of familiarity in friendships I found again. Brief. A kindness in those others, those, shall we say, compliant consumers.
I exchanged it for the mausoleum where artists who've ascended can house their lonely parades as finished works, deaf artifacts to live on, ingested by crowds of anonymous faces. I honed in on their possible back stories. I recognized the girl with a deformed head and face from my earlier failed attempt to work at a cafe (one with no electrical outlets or WiFi), she reappeared in the halls of the museum. Her grey-haired escort pushing her along in a wheelchair. What are the chances, running into them again? I had thought to myself after seeing her for the first time there in the cafe that I'd like to tell her she's beautiful. Not to be cruel, because it's painfully obvious that she's anything but, but to give her those words that she's maybe never heard. And to say it earnestly. Because I believe there must be some kind of beauty. Even in the most heinously disfigured of humans.
The expo was nothing but a quick interlude. The chance to kill time among people momentarily sure of what they're looking for (a cultural experience of sorts) in a life grossly devoid of certainty. And it was free. Security pushed us out of the galleries back into the city.
The allure of traveling can be found in its sharp honesty. You're confronted with yourself, un-moored, having to admit you don't know where you are, or quite what you're doing. Trading your sense of self as referenced within a culture, for your person as simply a figure in space, ready to find fulfillment as the boundaries dissolve around you. Forcibly, freeingly naive; dependent on a force beyond this carefully-constructed sense of self which, among the unfamiliar, no longer has the currency which once sold you out in exchange for recognition that you are indeed important.
On my way back I decided to let the stories go.
The drum beat found me as I found the rhythm. In an instant all that could be contained was the purity of eyes closed and seeing, shifting hips, pumping chest, sure feet, synchronicity. The sound, a sensation, a sort of indelible truth, a container which poured me out into the primal. My tribe, our energy; my imagination replaced the synthetic carpeting with dirt, earth. And free of substance, of self-importance, we got down, we got high as hell.

5:06am. My eyes open. The smoke alarm in my bedroom has decided to run out of batteries. And every minute or so it informs me of this with a shrill beep. Also, a feral cat is wailing outside my window. I try to decipher the sound, as if my hearing doesn't trust my judgement. Could it be a child? The kid upstairs? Waaaooooooooohhhhhwww. No. Definitely a cat. I imagine it laying belly up on the concrete giving birth. Or being raped from behind. Poor kitty. Beep. Waaaaooohhhwww. It's obviously in distress. Beep. In a flash, the image of my own cat giving birth appears. I have this file stored from 1995, the year I came home from school to play midwife to our cat in my closet, her choice hideaway for delivering kittens into the world. The wailing continues. The sky is still opaque. Though, gradient. Beep. I reach for my phone. 5:06am. My dream keeps playing, not bothering to wait for me, knowing I'll jump back in when I'm ready. Partly anxious to slip back into the stream, worried about losing my place. After another audible wail, I set down the phone, dive back in. The beeping dulls. Half way there, I wonder if these two sounds, piercing and disconcerting, are a something of a sign. I briefly consider shaking off sleep to meditate, feeling as though I'm receiving a wake-up call from beyond. The film I fell asleep to addressed the 2012 global shift. I remember this unsettling feeling the film gave me, my culpability, my contribution to the ecosystem's unraveling. Residue of one world remains as we transition into another. The battery's dead. The alarm sounds. Nature protests. How am I going to help? My grip on material reality loosens. My concern for the cat's welfare turns into a concern for my laundry and that strange street, the building I've moved into. I'm back in my dream. Heavy and blissfully out of control. Puppeteer and puppet at once.