Do Owls Need Parachutes?

Verbalizing promise, hope like the smell of an explosive about to blow

The scent aroused nostrils 

Beasts on the savanna startled 

Welcomed into weird little worlds 

Intoxicating, extrapolating underlying meanings 

The effect like sinking into a warm bath

Reconciling the calming waters

With fear of intimacy

The liquid cannot get too clear 

The animals will spot each other

Better the algae and the lilies make safety zones

She wants molasses speed and an emotional veil like a bulwark 

But is encouraging a poet to write to her, for her, 

To make palpable magic in the night 

Become theater on the page she and he experienced without speaking

Poetry is like making love to the enemy, indulging in the forbidden 

Cryptic emotions and Kandinsky contexts distorted to bend her regulations

That no intruders are allowed through the gate, but these feel good 

Ok only for a moment, then I’ll boot the bard  

The expectation in the hearth is not that she is a wild owl 

Swooping down on snakes and rats, but that 

She is afraid to even decide and ask for what she wants 

Getting that would be like flipping a switch for a sunrise 

At one a.m. glaring wide hooting eyes jaundice and dilated 

Having to immediately adjust from the perch of telling others no 

To facing the possibility of saying yes to her self 

On the level alone in a temple of past, present, and future 

Like a bauble she hangs around her neck in a pendant 

Personal and ephemeral, ungraspable but in plain sight 

Surprise, acknowledgement, and warmth like blood to a nervous callus 

Swelling, monitored and bursting in acquiescence 

To the weight hung round her nape

Knowing she is venturing into the prohibited taboo of the emotional 

Like she had her hand on the lever the whole time, the stick-shift

She can’t let it go on anymore 

Always in control knowing fire burns 

Redwood limbs in cinders fanned under departing wings

Floating towards moonlight’s cradle 

Characterizing a quintessence into an enigmatic selfish creature

Owl putting rules on tortoise as if feathers were shells 

One cannot fly and the other cannot make him into this pre-patterned specter

It’s easier if he’s a ghost like all the boys she’s sent away 

To slip into a script she wrote before he ever opened his mouth

That way when she tries to forget about him he can be just like the rest

Morphed into a footnote to the pages she speed-reads

A treble clef to the dance beat for regulated choreography 

Of who wants who and how much and when 

That this feeling is optional if she chooses it to be 

The book can be closed, the record needle lifted 

The power of a heart held in storage shifted 

She has fear she will hurt him worse later as she has so many before 

So she swipes her talons and he folds-in his turtle-head 

Not out of fear of shedding blood, but out of respect for the space 

She needs

He sees her just as well as who she always was from inside his shell 

As out in the open air, her breasts beat anger facing his daring audacious vision

She sabotages the bridges and the flightless will be left in Vietnam 

The gasoline used up setting fires to scare the cavalry 

Scarlet Hamlets, banned Buddhist flags, Hmong tribesman, phantom Tonkin torpedoes 

All wars end 

But not every soul comes back with the soul they entered with 

Tortoise just wanted to talk, not negotiate a surrender or trying to win or capture

He just wanted take a slow moment by the side of the road and trade war stories 

Reptiles and birds both lay eggs, bear a nest 

Even if they’re in tree hollows and logs 

Just wanted to share, knowing she knows so little about him 

He knows so little about her 

And he feels judged not for being a poor fit to the locket hung from her head 

But for being potentially a good key, like they both knew it, and she spooked, flew off

The scent on that is like saccharine caked icing spelling titles on confections 

With block letter names come definitions, the potential her mother taunts 

The wry rebellion itching of ‘You want me to be this

Well I will be that, why because no one will ever choose for me again 

I am getting out of this swamp to be a great-horned bird of the desert.’

Happiness requires a mutuality of election 

By definition each party ultimately chooses the same foundation

One saying I would like to proceed in this direction 

Is not disallowing the other’s choices or future volition

There is more than one path to get to the same destination

So in the turtle is placed upon the altar of paradox 

Sacrificed in the barter of love for fear 

As she tickles his ear for poetry and beckons him into vestibules 

To approach or to run, either way the owl sustains her first lover 

The darkness  

In one swoop like an elixir to make them both forget

As if the words were never read or spoken only the flat blackness remains 

Of strangers phasing back into strangers 

The marshmallow softness was always her toying with her permissions 

Dance, play, ‘I am no good at this and I am an arsonist baby!

I’ll burn you down, pushing the boundaries to remain untouchable 

I’m feeling quiet and not sure I want to be in a crowd 

Of even one, anxiety has got me, the darkness has me captive, and she always wins.’

The way he looked at her felt like rape, 

Violated for what was not his to know 

Costumed and tight-lipped with that chin

That descends and eyes open silently listening 

No one is supposed to hear her in that pose, but he does 

The alarms and the firebombs, too much, too soon 

If not now when, when is her heart supposed to blossom again 

If that is not what she was looking for why did she sign in to be matched?

He was enjoying ever so their time together

He knows she was too; thinking she is so afraid because all her cities lay in ruins 

So she blows this one up so that she is not standing in center square 

If he ever bails first; sad cliché as if when he asked her if she loved herself 

He was asking, “Do you think you are worthy of receiving love?”

From who, who has loved you if you say you think you might have been in love once 

But that’s it; the show was cancelled, like affection or concern is some dirty jargon 

For marmish soccer moms who give blow jobs to their lawyer hubbies once a solstice 

As if she has to lay down her antlers or start sleeping in camisoles and Spanx 

Slurping whole milk obeying Captain Crunch driving car pool 

And if she gets a speeding ticket he’ll ask for another divorce 

As if to share a home, to have a home, she’d have to fit in some stereotype 

In her head, not his and all he wanted was a god damn woman he could talk to 

Spend a little time with, maybe take care of on occasion and play in bed 

He wanted a lover to sit next to him flying to Seattle not be a sleepless cookie-cutter

Whatever she thinks he expects, he wishes she would have bothered to ask 

Maybe she did and he said a life partner and whatever that meant to her 

In no way could be him, 

Maybe in every way would not have been her 

But he wanted to try; he wanted to play the game, not just show up to an empty field 

And never know if things would have worked out 

He feels judged and used, taken advantage of and jilted 

Because he feels like she knows she is cheating herself from finding out too 

He feels like she is taking the easy way out instead of taking a chance 

Because happiness scares the hell out of artists 

How does one create from such a bright place?

How does one supplant the darkness an artist has spent his or her life alongside? 

Baby, all I got is poetry and you used me

You lit me on fire encouraging me to write for you

It is like me asking you to choreograph a dance just for me

In the quiet where only I could see to look at your body 

Vulnerable in true nudity and then closing my eyes and walking out 

Because I claimed it was too much, too soon, saying,

“I was not ready to look at the sun; I’m blinded by the light 

I don’t know what to do, but you got to go; it’s too intense” 

You have no idea what it took for me to hope

I may have hinted at it, but if my hoping startled you 

That’s a bitter irony  

The rule says when the airplane starts shaking uncontrollably

Put your breathing mask on first so you can help others 

And I was writing to try to sew us parachutes, to leap together

Because even if you can fly, maybe I can’t   

Maybe when I said I needed to go slow too 

I meant it and if you ever asked me why maybe you’d know 

Maybe you wouldn’t be so damn scared 

Maybe you’d open up a little and the world wouldn’t explode 

Because I am not the one who said there was a bomb on this plane

Maybe you wouldn’t have to fly away when the airplane starts to shake

You are built to sail the skies alone; I get it

The thing is I was built to walk this Earth the same way 

People are not meant to keep their hearts in diaries and makeup cabinets 

I would never try to convince you of a damn thing

I certainly am not doing that here, 

But I don’t want to watch you walk away from me without fighting for you

I was not done; there is too much you shared of yourself with me

Whether you intended to or not that tells me you are just running away afraid  

Breathe 

I am just a human being, a very kind empathetic human being 

Looking to share part of my life with a woman who might actually get me 

And I get her; what are you so afraid of?