Scream

This poem is driving me crazy. I cannot seem to get it quite the way I want it. I am interested in psychology especially disorders such as sociopathy. I am curious about nature vs. nurture and as a teacher feel it is my responsiblity to recognize the beginnings of these personality traits and guide my students on the correct path. It is my understanding that sociopathy is simply someone with the personality subtype "adventurous" that goes awry for some reason usually in the early years of life, occasionally later on if a head injury is involved. This poem is about a combination of sociopaths I have encountered through media as well as real life. -par

Munch's scream
stifled
behind
a wax museum figure

with cold dead eyes
dispassionately abstract

purpose driven and patient
like a praying mantis
plucking the life out of its victim

a predator with a plan
antiseptic, sterile
more machine than man

progressive or primeval
either way you are set apart
or perhaps left behind

for you, life is a factory
dirty and dull
churning out useless crap that
in the end
nobody really wants
they just pretend to
so you pretend, too

sometimes you sense its presence by its absence
like when a stranger helps you out and
you think...sucker

you walk down the streets comfortable in your mask
spying on neighbors through open windows
talking, laughing, fighting
completely at ease with each other
their intimacy eludes you

always the cool one
you begin to sweat

and when the wax starts to melt
even its noisy silence
cannot hide
your scream

Birdlady

She loved birds

Audubon pictures of:

red winged blackbirds
bluebirds, her favorite
finches
orioles
cardinals
blue jays
starlings
woodpeckers and
nightingales

printed on sugar packets
inside a milk glass jar
on her kitchen table

such a treat for six year-old hands to open
pretending it was birdseed
that we put into our tea

those six year-old hands are almost forty now
I look at them and they don't seem like they belong to me
out the window a cardinal pecks at some unseen prey
I rip open the packet and pour the seed into my cup

I am flown back to her turquoise kitchen
remembering the milk glass jar, the "bird sugar"
those strong arms folded over her calico apron
soothing like the coos of a mourning dove

perched against the counter
eyes fixed on the specks in the clear blue beyond the window

"You know why I love birds, Treela?
They are the luckiest animals. I want to be like them so that one day
I can fly away too."

(c) 2007 with all my love to you, Grandma. I know you are up there, flying high and loving those wings!