Silencer with Blues & Birds on a Wire

            My mind is playing tricks on me.

                                    —Geto Boys

            Will you miss the lone, stiff mister blue bird

ghosting it through a two-light town, in which

            you raise your chicks or cocks in Gothic dens

adorned in old doilies, rooster trinkets,

            a sweet aphorism, cross-stitched & hung

above the door? Or maybe you’re me-like,

            treading light, an Ave. where birds are called black-

blue—few, but enough for you to notice

            each absence. This deafening black swan song

I hear in wind, wrestling dark pansies

            against headstones—Dixie fifes. It shivers

my spine in sirens nigh, as wince, whiplash

            automatic—yes, bathed in swish of red

& white light, streetlamps crook like Georgia pines.