Shield my eyes from April’s glare,
because now that you’re gone, you appear everywhere
in fresh seasons that struggle to grow
through the last kernels of dark, hardened snow.

But all production halts; we don't resist
as gods withdraw their remaining services.
And bands dissolve. Leases terminate.
A great silence then descends on you,

until the birds explode from the branches up above,
darkening your path only briefly,
then leaving you the canvas of the sky to reconstruct their movements in your head.
And each street then accumulates these ghosts,
because art is not a luxury...oh no, no.
And it must proceed undeterred by all unconscious opposition, anyway.

Thoughts scrawled on discarded receipts
or backs of cash-handling procedure sheets,
on unpaid breaks, in highlighter pen
until the senses overload; a fog rolls in.

And then arriving home so tired tonight
that I don’t think that I’ll bother to write,
though the press of ideas, neglected like this
will find expression in dreams... dense dreams,

where the birds explode from the branches up above,
darkening your path only briefly,
then leaving you the canvas of the sky to reconstruct their movements in your head.
And each street then accumulates these ghosts,
because art is not a luxury...oh no, no.
And it must proceed undeterred by all unconscious opposition, anyway.

To be no longer just a vessel for our hungers;
or, at least, transform these hungers into
something bright and astonishing that nourishes itself. Yeah.

And then the birds explode...

Birds explode from the branches up above,
darkening your path only briefly,
then leaving you the canvas of the sky to reconstruct their movements in your head.