Eric Robert Nolan- Three Poems

"The Writer"

At night he dreamt of birds, thou­sands of them,

impris­oned in his house.

Ravens screamed in the attic.

Spar­rows pan­icked in the hall.

He sat at his desk.   A Jay pecked

Fran­ti­cally at his shirt sleeve.

The base­ment door revealed

Tor­rents of finches, erupt­ing in the dark

A loud gray storm

Of beaks and tiny claws.

Seag­ulls suf­fered in the cup­boards.

Para­keets in the rafters, trapped,

Raged in Etruscan.

He crossed the room.

Owls

Moaned under the floorboards.

Twelve red car­di­nals

Lined his kitchen shelves –

A dis­cor­dant jury.

Pea­cocks plead in the oven.

In a jar of sugar

Tit­mice strug­gled for air.

At his desk were

Pho­tographs, let­ters

Pens and a half dead Marten.

He reached for his old brown afghan but felt

Bone and feather

The heav­ing brown breast

Of a starv­ing eagle.

Some­times the scratch

Of pen against paper brought

Respite from birdsong:

Two less wings against the silence

One less voice in that

Trou­bled aviary.

A par­rot perched

On his paper stacks.

“Remorse,” it offered fee­bly.

“Regret,” he answered back.

"The Secretary"

Skin and cir­cuitry,

Metal and flesh.

Her dreams of child­birth were

Relent­less, recur­ring.

Push, push, push

Said a midwife’s mechan­i­cal voice.

Flu­o­res­cent lights flick­ered,

Then mur­mured dis­cor­dantly.

Coarse starched sheets

Scratched her knees.

Machines hummed in corners.

She pushed.

The prod­uct of her womb was hard —

Edges and angles

Against her inner thighs.

And at the end of that dif­fi­cult birth, look­ing down,

She saw coils and coils of bright cop­per wire.

By day, she was a sec­re­tary.

Peo­ple liked her.  Not enough, though,

For Valentine’s, dates, anniversaries.

With furtive eyes, she observed

All those lit­tle moments

That enchant a com­mon life.

So, she only worked.

Phone, file, phone.

Push, push, push.

At times, she imag­ined her womb

As a ges­tat­ing clock.

Its metic­u­lous gears

Marked the pas­sage of time.

Bat­ter­ies moved her limbs, her veins

Were wires in her skin.

She hid cir­cuits

Behind her eyes.

Elec­tric­ity rid­dled her brain –

Warm lightning.

Return­ing home one night,

She passed a fac­tory on her right.

Its smoke­stacks vaulted up

Like tur­rets.  The lights there

Were stacked stars.

Its fence hummed.  The smoke­stacks

Exhaled rhyth­mi­cally

Push, push, push.

A metal shed was there –

She imag­ined it had

A piston-​​beating heart

A mus­cled metronome –

Life in a bright steel box.

Arriv­ing home, her spine

Tick­led with cur­rent.

She reached her garage and parked.  Blue sparks

Danced in her sinuses.

Push, push, push,

Said a mid-wife’s mechan­i­cal voice.

She pushed some oily rags

To seal the open spaces

Beneath her garage door.

In her brain,

Machines hummed in corners.

She pushed the car’s igni­tion.

The air there nour­ished her, then.

The car­bon monox­ide

Push, push, pushed her.

She shut her eyes.

Her gears slowed softly.

"The Bureaucrat" 

Amity in his veins,

The gray, aging bureau­crat

Lit a cigarette.

He spied ice on a win­dowframe

How unlike its blue-​​cold form

Were the words of indus­try – warm.

Like sun­light on a mon­u­ment,

The bright hues of a flag,

Warm – like the ring­ing endorse­ment

Of a prod­uct or a plan.

Like the gaily col­ored cov­ers

Of an annual report.

Warm – like the newly dead.

© Eric Robert Nolan 2013

*****

BIO:  Eric’s poetry and short stories have been featured by Dagda Publishing, Every Day Poets, Every Day Fiction, Illumen, Under The Bed, Dead Beats Literary Blog, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Dead Snakes, Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine, The Bright Light Cafe, Aphelion, Tales of the Zombie War, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere.  His poems were also included in anthology format in Dagda Publishing’s “Threads” in September 2013.  Eric’s science fiction/horror short story, “At the End of the World, My Daughter Wept Metal,” was published in January 2014 in Dagda’s short story anthology, “All Hail the New Flesh.”