The Return of Sheikha A.

Tonight I'd like to welcome back Sheikha A., whose poems have appeared here:  http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2017/02/tad-richards-and-sheikha-a.html.  Like Sudeep Adhikari, she is among the poets from Resurrection of a Sunflower, an anthology that deserves even more acclaim than it has received.

Two Crows in a Bin

He hasn't left us any recycles,
lamented one to another.

You're rummaging the wrong bin,
replied the surly one.

Shards, rotting peas, uneaten
drumsticks... listed the nosy one,
no imagining tempers were flung
last night, it continued.

You can't bake pies from false eggs,
surly cut nosy off, stop your
business about pecking bins not
your own.

Uneaten drumsticks and shards spell
quarrel, nosy pressed on stubbornly,
and look, here is a gleaming ring too,
it squawked triumphantly,
I should know it was the man's cooking,
or perhaps, his smelly socks, nosy's
know-it-all tone circling the air.

Let's take it to our nest, surly mocked,
and frame it to the tree.

Shame on your sense of romance,
nosy taunted, I should sneak it back
to his poor, heartbroken bedside.

Oh, let's. That ought to re-spark their romance,
surly's sarcasm equalising the day's swelter.

Nosy did as nosy willed. Next day,
beak poked into the same bin:

He threw the ring away, again! A shrill
lament echoed yester-morning's
but with a note of personal pathos.

Our tree-wall awaits its ornament,
surly revised the idea.

Meanwhile, man glaring at the
two crows from his window. Swift
like a baseball pitch, a shiny black
shoe bonked nosy's head, bouncing
off of the rim, landing a stench on
its drop into the bin.

Meddling mass of feathers! He yelled,
stick to your ecological sphere.
Human emotions are not your realm
of physics, hurling the other pair
missing surly.

Surly smirked: emotions not his realm
of balance either, mock-circling
the clumsily landed shoe on the
pave.

Come along, nosy, surly flapped his wings
rising into the air like a grand king,
let's find us new bins to pervade.

You won’t believe

the whispers and the holes
in my mouth;

sometimes the best way to see is
by the breath a kiss releases.

I discard myths every day
after living them every night

and dream of a mountain break
off its roots only to roll away

into nowhere. The ground
covered in thick depth of snow,

white and sheen, like a strike of
thunder in the night. Simple

sights: water from the sky
is pure, but broils angst

in a sea. A shark’s hunger opens
to a dead wolf:

world in the grasp of vain hyenas.
A nightingale is a

unicorn on a tree: airplane hawks
shooting to the ground.

Understanding isn’t the deed
of chaos. The vision is "believe."

Since the theme tonight is birds, I am going to post some videos of Donald Byrd.  Enjoy!  He is/was a jazz musician born in the 1930s.

I'll start with "Rock Creek Park," which he did with the Blackbyrds:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkXh4kRTBVk

I first heard of Byrd on Guru's "Loungin'":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD3BDltkQxY  Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 was one of my favorite albums back in the day.

Let's go back in time to 1959 with Byrd's "Here I Am":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBbph3Umo2A

He also played with Sonny Rollins on "Decision":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyybaelYR8s

I am trying hard to find a version of Rollins' "Don't Stop the Carnival" with Byrd, but this one will have to do:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DZoD8msjpM

Enjoy!