a brilliantly angry tattooed daughter of the sun

disembarking the city bus

sharing certain sorrowful lexemes

neighbors at war 

the years he carried around

the First Book of Seconds

now you can Google the face 

you had before you were born

a faint star in the smoky vault of night

all I could carry

butterfly on the sun-washed screen

nobody’s getting up to look

he admitted to worrying about  how butterflies

were getting along in the thunderstorm

easy, it’s merely an orientational flight

of the long-tongued bee

he begins with wanting to incarnate to the Apache horse-paths of heaven

and ends up ordering a corned beef on rye with coleslaw and Russian dressing 

an hour early with a notebook and pen 

pleased as he is timing the water beetle’s change of direction

get the Tai Chi and beaded garden web out of that poem

and tell how you broke your mother’s heart

arching his back to gaze

at a picture of the Himalayas

he’s working in charcoal now

starting with his hand on the garage wall

crushing the earth in my chair

a sparrow dropped-down into clover

Bio: Patrick Sweeney is a short form poet and a devotee of the public library.