Hanging Tree

I hear the whippoorwill crying deep into the hot indigo, the fragile love I felt in my heart break

You so easily led me to fall

You should have known of my destiny’s painful call

Will you still hold on to your fallacies

As I let the day break be my pall,

The shroud of sheathed mortality

That you sunk into me, you will call it a draw.

I could not be that soothing beacon

I was there when you called

Will you still hold on to your fallacies

As all the children fall?

I hear their pleading cries in the whippoorwill’s shrill and desolate crawl

I am made of nothing but desert, dust and fire

Clay and molded gall.

I cry for all of men, women and children

I cry for you,

Most of all.

I sing with the whippoorwill

I sing as I drawl

My never-ending song

That creeps, slides and saws

the rivers that are all split

As my baby’s back

Make my chest heaving

Sobs that rack

I stopped when you were silent to my tears

So silent— it was the night, so deep and smoky and beautiful

That I dreamt about my first hovering breath

When I saw the universe, God’s universe

Encased in men’s mortal casket

Surrounded by white fire

Surrounded by the earth

Surrounded by the Hanging Tree you were meant to meet me

At midnight

So we could stoke the flames of a fire only I had faith in.

I broke the lyrical separation into a disjointed mess that makes up this story

And poem

A mess that is me,

A mess that is you,

A mess that will never be we.

Now I sink into the hanging tree

Now I sink deep inside its roots

A split up

Agony

That I can only see.