MPB (to my brother)
by Michael Burkard
Not even darkness between the tightness of initials. Not even a fabrication of a shadow. No house to return to – that’s okay. An apartment with yellow flowers and a view would or will suffice. But here comes the twist of the mind. The undramatic ghosts with their undramatic ghost voices. Self absorbed snowfall. Moonlit envy. Forest with penis envy. Yes, a forest. Not what you would commonly consider with a forest.
A river with nothing but jealousy running through it.
The river does not run through a state or a country – the river runs through
its own jealousy.
Got it?
I get it.
But do you, did you?
No sail to invest in, no boat, never any interest in those anyway.
The shore as seen from the boat
or the boat as seen from the shore – yes.
I feel like a half-hidden failure who would like to die but will settle for another kind of miracle -no, who am I kidding. I have nothing to say. It has all been said.
My mother’s hand was like the wind in a tree.
My father’s eyes are like a place called somewhere.
I am not from higher up
- I am not from lower down-
or lower than or higher than.
at no point did i dislike moonlight
but i hated myself for uprooting my cat – nita whom i had inherited -
nita whom does not deserve any uprooting or any “more”
- and i hated myself for never spending the day
telling the truth – there seems to have always been little turns or cracks or entire roads
where i just veered off again – wooing some other family, of words or emotions
or reactions or stories
to be enfolded in the web of some “now” other than now
or some today or yesterday other than it is or was – the future is more like
Tuesday than Friday – a cut in my mother’s thumb that left a small scar,
or scarlet fever as a child that left white marks on her neck -
my father would come up behind her to kiss her hair as she was doing something -
and i looked but i also turned away.
it doesn’t have to mean anything else – nevertheless someone
out there somewhere says…. or stay in the wet grass when you visit
a relative – long enough to have a stranger come along in the place of a
old but pale shadow -
who was to be believed? mpb – no -
mpb could stand for male pattern baldness anyway – who knows -
even though i am not losing my hair
maybe that is what my abbreviated self stands for -
or moon police backwards
or make problems believing
or male pale break
who knows -
it has all been said before and by someone other than me of course
it must be simply a matter of moving a word over here a sound over there
letting some dark room or some bright sunlight
sing to you like a red sweet bird -
then flight – and the heart of the hour of the day
"Man and Bird and House" by Michael Burkard
“Man and Bird and House” by Michael Burkard
