*bad Bird Poem by Stug Jordan

'Was told it wasn't he but was,
but promised it was she, was not;
they struggled to be we, and just forgot.'

Bad birds, struck the skies of English parks
like shuttlecocks or two clock hands,
kicking chestnuts, unlocking four fingers.
And now the bell thunders in his head,
'Nero, is dead.'
And when he lands with the grass beneath his feet,
it's for the first time, but his heart of wings
is up there still, oblivious to the earth.
This bad bird will never fly again,
the weight of two guilts a harder gravity,
his tears torn from him like a page in history
and the details of a long lost song
to the mad emperor of love, repeating it was him
and him and him all along.