Sick morning birds in the Sonoran Sunrise
during the Sunday dawning season of the tweets
in anticipation of the endless end of the world
that begins tomorrow consistently amplified
by the bats and thirsty ants disturbed by daily radar,
by the Green Belt ducks by the pool sipping on chlorine
Back East the ice is softened, the ground is soaked,
as the talking heads put on their pancake batter,
try to memorize talking points on single sheets,
pouring sugar and syrup
down blue and red breasted throats
while the birds of this southwestern city
chirp in the symphony of monkeys
falling from the sky
and mating season
is thrown off the rails
in the human quake
Morning now and they are loud
coast to coast, harmonizing, slow roasted,
in the cacophony of disconcertment
and the polar shift of wind
sucks the sweat of all labors
into the air and drops it down from a cloud
on the Kansan plain, shredding a trailer park
as the insurance agents turn off their phones
and wounded sailors sigh at the sound of basketball
The canopy of trees we seldom look up to see
The aviary of green leaves, thick trunks,
grown around the walls, despite the apartment complexities,
as suburban Thoreau picks on orange from a front yard,
wondering how long it takes the peel to decompose
if dropped for the next sixty years of ever cracking sidewalk
And the tweet goes on as the coffee dreams us awake
And the eyeliner girls doze in weekend hangovers
And the casino lights have all gone cold
And the lonely lost shepherds chase their scattered sheep
And the personal items, lost lighters, broken bracelets
are discovered by the sunrise, as the day's new wheels
grind the leftovers into a glittering of everlasting dust
They are on now, the clattering news champions
but the coo of the white owl in the trees,
the panic in the swirling electronic hive,
is a found then lost in a transcendent moment of rest
Soon enough we wonder how will we fill our day,
will our shopping carts be filled in the land of plenty,
with plastic bottles destined to float in the sea
on an island the size of Texas, but now, just now,
the dot of love is connecting to the eternal line,
the spring is working overtime
The rumor is the raspberry has no soul
The rumor is mankind only knows heaven
Yet precarious life up and down the food chain
knows nothing more than the dome of God
fading blue to whitewash, then back into stars,
and that is more than enough from the beginning
to the end of the next night, when the chorus of conceit
blows on smoking wings to pat down the dumpster fire
we like to call Monday, as the highway roar rises
stirring the dirt into the dumb light
~ Scottsdale, Arizona
