Unfinished Business

Painting by Rick Mobbs

so this is recovery, you claim (unfinished business)

So this is recovery,
you claim
you found something new
today
to name
but all I hear is
birds, birds, birds.

Last week’s New York Times
sits
still unopened.
You were interested,
you said.
The schizophrenics
you have known
all led front page lives.
The one
or two
you tried to reach
succumbed
to misery,
or death,
or sleep.

TEACH ME DEATH
you say
they dreamed,
yet
you dreamed of fish.
Now it’s birds.
Birds, birds, birds.
All I ever hear is birds.

Ain’t
you got no sense?
Sometimes Frankie
I think
the Devil got you.
I think you think
too much
or not at all.

How come
Frankie
all this talk
of names?
EVERYTHING HAS DONE BEEN NAMED
already, Frankie.
We both know that,
except these damn
birds
your house is full of.
It ain’t enough
to name them
Zimri
as a bunch
like that.
How they tell themselves apart?
That’s how
schizophrenics get their start,
end up calling theirselves
us.
How you think
that feel,
a whole damn flock
within one skull
and furthermore,
Frankie?

Rick Mobbs January 2008