(I found this scribbled in my backpack on a note. I don’t remember who wrote it or if i got it exactly right. I’m going to the library later today and I will look it up. I wanted to share this right now because as I wake up for a new day it was (I think) what I was dreaming about. It’s a simple poem but says so much about the artist and well, just human relationships in general, and how far apart from each other we really are, but how much we often mean to other people.)
A local man estimates what he did for his brother who became a poet and what his brother did for him
I shot a chicken in the tree above
where her body stood howling after I’d shot
bitterly he cried so loud of feathers love
itself became involved lord, lord, the fit
he threw was terrible. He said his head-
his sacred head- was daubed for poetry
He said cruelty would make him mad
He said it was a ritual catastrophe
Herbert was spattered with old chicken blood
and feathers from eyes to knees
He said later, twelve years later, that he was sad
He’d frightened me. Within a month he died
on his deathbed he reached out for my hand
and said we come from where we get
the wound.
Adventures In American Writing 