Without The Rest

I would lie to you if I could...

If silence is revealing,
what does it reveal?
The little that is left,
that is outside, that is
the world? No two silences,
you suppose, are alike,
beyond every silence
there is always something
you think it's fair to call sound.

Does that mean it's not silence,
that nothing is? To be honest,
you don't care. People who use
the word destiny are seldom
to be trusted, just as people
who write books are
seldom to be trusted.

You found a pair of wings on the sidewalk
today, wings utterly abstracted
--or subtracted-- and perfectly preserved.
Everything that would constitute the rest
was gone, and without the rest,
of course, a pair of wings is useless.
They were built for the sky.

You might expect a crime scene
to be messy, but this was as neat
as a crime scene could be, really.
Whatever had deemed the wings
useless had taken the time to eat
or make off with everything else.

That the criminal had left the best part
as evidence almost seemed like a
taunt, an insult to the most stubborn
dreams and metaphors of the human
imagination. Isn't that what the true
criminal does, though? Says Let's see
where what's left will get you? Destroys
the heart and head and says Good luck
getting your dreams aloft now,
destroyed bird, sad little man.
Look at the sky and the
trees and the moon and feel
nothing but hobbled longing.

If you think it is distressing
to awaken from a dream of flying
to discover that you have no wings,
imagine how it must feel to awaken
from such a dream to discover
a pair of bloodied wings tucked
under your pillow and rustling
like something that still has
dim memories of flight.

You live now on the floor of the world,
and the sky is so distant, and gray.
You get used to it, but you still
can't stop dreaming of flying away,
even as you sense that you are
never again going to find anything
to do with those wings, even as
night falls, and keeps on falling,
and outside your windows the air is
ceaselessly stirred by the frantic
beating of black wings, huge
and dusty and terrifying, the usual
wee hours massing of the bleak birds
biding their time, but unquestionably
anxious to finally pick you clean.