HAND OVER FOOT

I am beneath you on the ladder grabbing your ankles
to simulate terror. You have so wonderfully leant us against
our home. We are in position to assume the position.
Hand over foot is how I love you. A shingle is a blackbird
flattened and glittered. The roof needs shingles.
People who do bad things should fall from high places.
The contradictory tension of self-preservation and principle
is eased by life at sea-level.

__

WELL, HOW THIRSTY ARE YOU?

I see that you have tied my trumpeter swans circularly
by the necks. Their ring song is a kink
in my throat. You drink water
as though you have never before seen cruelty.
There is an island in your glass, and people on it.
My dead swans float
like a lifesaver in the distance. They would have serenaded you
saxophonically, had you liked that.

__

For some months I've sought to write poems as threats, an experiment that has almost uniformly resulted in my poems turning a threatening eye toward me. I am not an intimidating person, either by stature or demeanor. The poems seem to know this, and have mockingly summoned any number of frights to my proverbial doorstep. In this instance, a screaming lakeside swan in the nighttime, and the subsequent worry over its fate, guilt for lacking the bravery to swim to its aid in the dark.