ANGEL OF POETRY | onyx feathers

The Angel of Poetry shook me with his muscled hands tonight, but no words divulged/streamed from my mouth or hands.

I sewed up those wounds yesterday, I told him. And asked to lie in his dark wings.

Some nights ricochet, I wept. Even the rain doesn’t dull.

The Japanese plum peonies have surrendered their blooms to the storm, the hidden moon.

The redolent dusty lilacs we waited for an eternity to open have unsealed spring’s nectar.

Nothing is frozen externally, at least.

Too much is broken—the flower pots, the left panel of the privacy wall, Buddha’s chin, the indoor table on the patio; mantras of composure.

I missed the conversations at dinner, pulled into the interstices of lost music.

The maestro’s hands had become water-logged birds. He knew.

The rain’s steadfast vertical; no slant to wash the windows to watch the neighbor’s wall-sized TV for an explanation of the mass shooter or the plane crash.

The Angel of Poetry’s wings morphed into feathers of black swans; lost at the river’s mouth.

The Book I had been writing became too heavy to hold.

I told him I ripped pages for folded paper ships; how one match took out the whole fleet.

How my ideas of love can become incoherent. How I wrote a letter to the scientist asking him for pills for heartache, for moving to the top of someone’s list.

I left today’s painting, “Melancholy,” in the rain to take some of the brushstrokes away, as he already knew. The uninitiated will not understand.

Wishful thinking can burn out the engine. One wants, at times, to be outside the brain and its frenetic tango. What does it matter what the day is called?

The grass is embarrassingly tall, but at least there was no tree-fall in the hail storm.

I washed my hair in the rain since there were no stars.

I told him I am tired of being a pronoun.

But he was gone.

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2 Responses to ANGEL OF POETRY | onyx feathers

  1. Myke Todd says:

    The question I would have, at this point is, with him being gone at the end;
    how much of what was said was heard?

    I really love this poem. It speaks of places where I spend all of my quality time;
    between shade and shadow.

    • Krysia Jopek says:

      Ahhhh, this is a good question. Does he hear any of it? I didn’t think of that. Thank you so much for always reading my writing, for being so supportive, and commenting so thoughtfully/poetically! Happy you spend your quality time between shade and shadow–such lovely phrasing.

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