Andy Roberts

 

The Blank Need That Eats

I will put on a clean shirt and walk to the party
and if you still don't like me
talking about the black eyes of birds
that give back nothing
-no light, no fear, no brain-
while pecking at insects, I'll leave.
You see, I've installed a one-way glass in my window
on the ledge where the starlings roost, feasting on midges,
and I can look directly into their eyes
from less than an inch away.
I understand how it scares you,
all this talk about drive and Darwin
and the furious metabolisms that require
each starling to consume its weight in insects each day or die.
But it's the nothing that fascinates me,
the blank need that eats,
as I return in my clean shirt
to the dark house alone.

Just A Smile

I have switched off the radio and the false lights
in the sky have long gone off.
Now I hear the soft scrape of a pencil across white paper
and the voice of someone humming a love song.
I don't remember speaking-only an animal happiness, the flare of a match,
and suddenly it's time to feel attractive again, after all these years.
Your smile warming me like a hot bowl of soup
this cold winter morning, alone at my kitchen table,
writing a love note, looking out my window into beautiful brightness.

L.A. Morning

Overmedicated with coffee and cigarettes,
watching a televangelist on cable tv,
eating my oatmeal from a small silver bowl,
I shall stumble no more though parking lots at dawn,
humming under enormous power lines,
dragging my back legs behind me like a broken animal
through grass wet with dew.
The radio towers have all been climbed
and I have bottomed out,
itching on the couch with a bowl of oatmeal,
a lighter, remote control with mute button engaged,
silence creeping from the mouths of the faithful
like fog, like white clouds
the morning after sampling the oldest drug in the world
I swear again, for the last time, I am through.