on the roof

night birds glide through thickened dark skies

and rudely perch on my anxious roofing tiles,

scraping the raw insides of my troubled soul

with urgent gleeful noises taking their toll...

on the roof that will not comfort my eyes.

.

is this what she meant when she sighed and said

"son, your eyes will someday see for not looking

in moments beneath the belief that all is dead.

when the time is fit for the stars' eventual meeting

the heart shall be fodder in another fool's head".

.

decades later, flirting with the risk of something new

something different, something disturbing and final,

I'm in utter wonder, wandering barefoot across dew,

wishing for a stranger to curse me with a love special

so my chronic insomnia may have meaning anew.

.

those accursed fowls with claws still scratch -

constant, deliberate, eerie without match -

keeping nerves exposed and a heart awake.

o to smother their gnawing just for sleep's sake

from this roof that seems to have met its match.

.

may this be the final throes and the imminent death

of my soul presaged by the pesky piping of night birds?

or may it just be the portal that leads to my rebirth

signaled by the stirring heart-strings and coded words?

no matter what, this is the hour for mooring, my berth.

.

could this be me expiring slowly with no taste at love,

a mind clouded by doubts of odds blown, and regrets,

or is it a dark riddle sprung at depth of night from above

so I may prepare my broken frame for coming threats?

does it even matter if this puzzle is there to resolve?

.

perhaps the doomed birds are not on my roof at all

and it is just my overworked imagination after all;

perhaps planetary shifts and the elements are in this

together, nudging me ever so coyly to make a wish

regarding this roof that arrests my dreams as null.

.

may I then be blindsided by an enslaving heat-seeking kiss,

casually flung in the jumbled air by a fallen alien goddess

promising nothing but a vow total in its very embrace,

and may i possess the presence of mind to boldly profess

"I receive you, spirit embodied in my mother's promise"?

.

can't I just for once oblige a notion out of sightless faith,

an idea devoid completely of mortal reason or rhyme

nor this, that, the third, all the way to the very eighth?

is that such a uniquely dreadful and unforgiving crime

destined to definitely place me beneath a bowed wreathe?

.

the night birds gliding through thickened dark skies

and rudely perched on my anxious roofing tiles,

scrape the raw insides of my troubled resigned soul

with urgent gleeful noises violently taking their toll...

on the roof that will not comfort my tired eyes.