A Poet in Student Halls

Between shapes moving towards the serpent
and crystal craving shapes,
I'll grow a beard as deep as the river,
and stick a poster on my wall.

With a tree that can't stop singing
to itself in the shower,
and yet seems strangely out of tune,
with the chirp of evening birds,
who shake their orange feathers
like cards pulled slowly from desperate sleeves,

and with leaves that are crowded
for things to say,
mumble all at once on the wings
of a guitar, propped up in the corner.

Sinister faces with low-slung hats
and shifty red agendas,
disappear in dreams that are dead or are dying,
to be replaced by the sight of infant suits,
with the blank face of an egg or a mirror,
stood quietly in perfect posture
of deep round circles,
flinging facts and figures
at concrete walls.

And with all the bone-tired, deaf and dumb things
and butterflies drowning in ink wells,

what is there left to say
for the would be student poet?
Except, perhaps, as Lorca once cried,
a flamboyant arm
flung in the face of his audience,
"Cut down by the sky!"
"Cut down by the sky!"

But then, maybe, it should have been
"Cut down by my I?"

Either way, the outcome is still the same,
we are both left to feel for the weight of our words,
with legs that fold slowly inside wooden chairs,
we are both cut down in the corner.