So this guy wrote some poems a long time ago,
and I would be remiss if I didn't read some of these.
I wanted to read some that I had never read in public before.
So I'm going to pick these two short poems.
This is called Caw and Crow.
I'm a crow of a man, Hamlet's last, best interpretation.
Preferring my body the color of absence, dark,
disconnected as a phone line, as a blank shack.
Attracted by the sharp, the shiny--
chrome and chrome's likeness--
the dark reflection of self in small things.
Listen, the finish of this lighter
doesn't show much else besides the truth.
It's a luminous machine and it burns at a simple, exact task.
I've taken to skipping Sunday mass,
and the buckles on my shoes, the straps
remind me of the vows I vowed against.
When I write about a man smoking a cigarette,
I mean my grandfather's gray wool suit, I mean me.
Too distracted by the glittered cleavage of stones,
by what's been revealed, how it's accrued.
Listen, a crow will land in December snow
to leave an angel's print, clear and cold
as the light between pines.
Their throaty calls break the air like flint--
strike and spark-- in the cryptic wood cutter's cottage,
grandfather serves his penance, splitting wood
for fires that will not burn.