All evening I hunted
the bird that wanted
a cage of glass,
here where cemetery
slides into creek, fronting
what was once the largest
indoor leather mill in the world.
There the skins gathered
for cleansing, coloring,
scraping, shipping off.

It closed three years after
a lone sparrow set up camp
behind the only desk
in the only full-serve
service station left in town
where, from four to seven
nightly one summer,
I blackened the pages
of books with my thumbs.

Whatever it sought there—
thumping its frightened body
against glass, into cabinets
or out to the bays
scrubbed raw with gasoline
where the broken waited
to be raised up, hosed off,
fastened together in hope
of coughing to life again—
whatever it sought was not a dollar
slipped through a window cracked
because patronage was right
for the aging ladies of August to provide
from Chryslers cool in the sun.

There was nothing to be found
in books or boxes of parts.
And the tools hanging from pegs
were as useless as my hands,
which could not patch together
those straggling conveyances
any more than I could
with a tattered broom
batter the bird to freedom
as I swung at fluttering terror
as I sought with useless devices
some fortune reposed
in corners of grease and dust.

BY JOSEPH CAMPANA

” . . . treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”

~Emily Bronte~

Fiyero, don’t tell a soul what you’ve seen
This is the life that you and I are meant to lead
I can’t let you in, ’cause the world is falling to pieces
I can’t let you in, ’cause the world is falling to pieces
Fiyero, don’t tell a soul a word we speak
I need to know, if I don’t make it home, you won’t look for me
I can’t let you in, ’cause the world will tear us to pieces
I can’t let you in, ’cause the world will tear us to pieces
Don’t even let them hear you breathe
I’ll never see you again, ’cause the world has torn you to pieces
And don’t you dare deceive destiny
Her for you, but you for me
And don’t you dare deceive destiny
Her for you, but you for me
Her for you, but you for me
For me

~Hannah Fury~

you always felt like suede
there are days i feel your twin
peekaboo
hiding underneath your skin
jets
are revving yes revving
from a central source and this
has power over me
not because you feel something
or don’t feel something for me
but because
mass is so big
it can swallow swallow her whole star intact
call me ‘evil’ call me ‘tide is on your side’
anything that you want

anybody knows you can conjure
anything by the dark of the moon

boy
and if you keep your silence
silencer on you’ll talk yourself right into a job
out of a hole
into my bayou

i’m sure that you’ve been briefed
my absorbtion lines
they are frayed
and i fear
my fear is greater than my faith
but i walk the missionary way
you always felt like suede
there are days i am your twin
peekaboo
hiding underneath your skin
jets
are revving yes revving from
an ether twist
call me ‘evil’
call me ‘tide is on your side’
anything you want

anybody knows you can conjure
anything by the dark of the moon

boy
and if you keep your silence
silencer on you’ll talk yourself right into a job
out of a hole
and into my bayou
into my, my bayou
suede

oh little sister, i hope you didn’t feel that way
oh little sister, i’m glad you came, and i said
oh little sister, i hoped you wouldn’t feel that way
oh little sister, oh again, and i said
oh little sister, i hope you didn’t feel that way
oh little sister, i’m still glad you came, i said
oh little sister, i wish you didn’t feel that way, and
oh little sister, said, i’d do the same, do the same
oh little sister, i hoped you wouldn’t feel that way
oh, i said, i wish
oh little sister, can you forgive me one day
can you forgive me
suede

~Tori Amos~

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”

~William Blake~

“Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.”

~Amy Lowell~

“…God gave you style and gave you grace

and put a smile upon your face…”

~Coldplay~

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

~Walt Disney~

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It’s worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

~Sylvia Plath~