his child,
his creation,
his pride and his darling,
burns with hatred--
not for a sky it cannot ascend to,
not for seeds or fruit it cannot consume,
but for him,
for giving it the desire for these things--
a futile and ceaseless hunger that drives it out of its mechanical mind.
See the mad bird and its bloodied creator
staggering together down the boulevard.
Here is disfigurement.
Here is patricide.
Here is instruction:
When Daddy brings his bird home,
stay silent and pray only to the bolt across the door.
_______
This is blistering and on point in so many ways--our country, our politics, our own failed ambitions and personas...what we do to ourselves as well as what others do to us. Brilliant, caustic and all too real, that bird. Last lines are killer.
ReplyDeleteThis is hilarious. I love it. :)
ReplyDeleteHere's my favorite part: "a futile and ceaseless hunger that drives it out of its mechanical mind" ... because I think what you're saying is that the "bird" is forced out of its mechanical (robot) mind (function, function, function) and into its physical (human) mind (feel, fancy, faint). It's easier not to know what Daddy taught him/her.
Also, hatred isn't many steps away from love. They're typically bedfellows.
I love that this could be about so many different things (child abuse, adult love, even imagination itself [which can become a monster]). And actually, I could even see this with the bird representing a reader, and the father representing a book he/she read, be it poetry or philosophy, self-help, even ... just something that made the "bird" hungry for change that couldn't put into effect.
It could also be about a cult.
Or, the speaker of the poem could be warning the reader (people he lives with, his wife, his children) to watch out for whatever he's been out there creating, especially when he's bold enough to bring it home with him. It could be a person. It could be an addiction (alcohol, drugs, sex). He could be an author, and "it" could be what he's been writing (think of all those horror movies that go very wrong for the author and his family because of what/where/how he's writing).
I'm even thinking of the show Dexter, when he's sort of mentored by another serial killer ... a man he ends up having to kill.
I'm also led to picture a sort of Edward Scissorhands spinoff, where the creation is given *almost* everything it needs, but then its creator poofs out of the picture before the hands are put in place.
The last seven lines really pumped me up, as getting stoked over poetry goes.
What a wet pleasure to read and splash around in (sans floaties). Thank you! I'd been anxious for your next poem.
Ooh, also, maybe the author/poet has created something so gritty-delicious that it's close to becoming human itself ... it's hungry for more, at least. It feels like it might like to have a soul. (There's a Care Bears movie like this. Also, think of the diary, the horcrux, in Harry Potter.) I think a book could kill its creator ... and probably has.
Wow, what if the bird is the man's brain and it wants to kill the man so that it can take over?! What if this is about a severed identity ... Jekyll and Hyde kind of story? The creator IS the creation; he just doesn't know it. Man, I want the book and movie extensions of this made available to me RIGHT NOW!!!
ReplyDeleteOkay, I am seriously jonesing for your next poem. PLEASE write tonight.
ReplyDeletePUH-LEASE!!!
",...not for a sky it cannot ascend to, nor fruits and seeds it can't consume, but for giving it the desire for these things." Exactly. Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThe close here is wonderful--this piece bites in the best way for me
ReplyDeleteThis piece is full of sound and fury, and gnashing beaks. A bit terrifying in its vision, and a startling metaphor for all invention which inevitably turns on its inventor.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
ReplyDelete