here I stand upwind
with a dead bird in my hands
in barren Eden
and look at the sore plucked backs
of my deserting brothers
I yell after them
“omens are a pile of crap!
who can blame people
if hosts of heaven act like
credulous aborigines?”
wind snatches my words
and mixes them up with sand
nobody believes
that cold grey ash in my hands
is an arising phoenix
by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2016
unbolt me 
great title and i love the last four lines. and of course, the art.
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I’m well pleased at how it’s all come together. I think Tati’s poetry is just getting better and better! 🙂
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Amazing stirring in very few lines.
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Tati is the master of doing that, LLW. Thank you so much for visiting and reading! 🙂
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love the image and poem together…great interaction. (K)
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I was delighted when Tati chose one of my pieces to pair her poem with. I’m astonished at how well they go together! 😀
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They do!
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Reminds me of Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize speech. In it, the old woman asks, “Is the bird alive, or dead?” Beautiful poem!
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Oh, Tati’s gonna love you for that comparison, Blue! 😉
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Great verse. Great art. Stirred my blood! You guys nailed it here…
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Thank you very much, J.H. 🙂
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I just finished a short story titled The Sands of time, which finishes with man kneeling on a beach. There is a connection. Love the poem, it works for me. Powerful, yet vulnerable and painful in its moment of hopelessness.
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I couldn’t agree more, P.R. Tati has walked that delicate line between hope and hopelessness, I think. It just works so well, doesn’t it? 🙂
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Yes, it does Tony. Please, call me Phil 🙂
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Phil it is! I’m very pleased to meet you. 🙂
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Well done!
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It really is, isn’t it? So much expressed in so few words. Brilliant! 🙂
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Wow, I needed that today. How did you know how I felt?
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We didn’t, Bridget, but we’re so glad that it touched you. It makes all of our hard work composing these poems worthwhile. 🙂
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Feuerbach redivivus, midwifing the Übermensch. A prelude to Zarathustra?
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Maybe Tati stole drafts of the fifth volume Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 😉
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Very good! I especially like the ending: “that cold grey ask in my hands is an arising phoenix.” The Phoenix rising is one of my favorite themes. So often what dies, burns, and rises again is the creativity in our own hearts, minds, souls.
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I couldn’t have put it better, Jonathan. Tati will be so pleased to read this awesome assessment of this poem! 😉
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