From “Sharking of the Birdcage”

                                 
                                  what was it you
                                  wanted us to
                                  say after you died 
it’s awful without you making sound exist
                                you said ponder this
                             but none of us can remember
                             what now dear please speak up
                             when quaking became zeal to open
                                            nothing now but a
                                  medieval barking gargoyle
whoever gave you the tambourine shall
                   be sheriff of my tender zoo
                            I am not here
                            I am in the future
                            where I have always been
            please hurry back and forth to
                                kiss me my ghost

Credit

Copyright © 2014 by CAConrad. Used with permission of the author.

About this Poem

“The series of poems ‘Sharking of the Birdcage’ comes out of my recent, long (Soma)tic poetry ritual I created at the MacDowell colony where I meditated with a crystal given to me by my boyfriend Mark Holmes the last time I saw him. He was brutally murdered, leveling my life with depression for a time. These poems mark a healing, a return to wholeness for me.”
—CAConrad