The Blue Jay

We sat, reduced to dusty, war battered, train filler,
tearing away from desolation, moving headlong into something cold.
Our faces shared a moment;
it was a moment of sadness and exhaustion.
The sound of death is actually quite peaceful when you're alive–
but only when you're alive.
A wave of chaos slowly breached the top of our car sending alarms ablaze.
From top down, we were flooded out once again,
And from behind came destruction, and forward it ran
tipping momentum and spilling progress into the grain.
Regrouped, we marched through oceans of grass and debris,
each step sounded hostile, each breath sounded forced:
My world of color, reduced to two.
Through the thicket sat a farm house shack with a coop out back,
just enough for us to take shelter from the storm.
A couple of age greeted us like expected company.
The tea was hot, the house was warm,
but in their eyes held a familiar chill.
Pseudo fruit bowls sat next to cobwebbed candles,
pictures lacked the life that should naturally come upon their creation,
there was a strange complacency exuding from the couple, almost as if --
--They expected abnormality.
I sat my cup down, and moved to ask of their origin.
Whatever I was creating noticed the shift of reality
and a storm in the form of a virgin, busted through the door
She sang of mumbles, her clothes stained with mud and her eyes rolled white as the moon
This is what the couple had been expecting.
They spit at us, explaining that this was common, and floated her into the other room
I stepped lightly, not to disturb what was already that.
She shot up and looked through me with the ease of a breath
Her screams were filled with experience, and the sweat down my spine the same
"You can't see my hands!"
like a knife it hit me, cold and calculated
it sent me spinning outside.
What waited for me out there was the shellshocked chaos we had been running from
Bunkers and Bullets laughing, like carefree children through the pines
the Devil was real; it was there; a bullish swine
Around a wall of woods, he charged with a purpose
Our focus was that of Hemingway
Uneasily Calm when among the ones who ravage.
The noise that came before our victory was something that rippled our skin.
The light that came before the silence was something that didn't seem real.
I looked it in the eyes and walked away just fine.
The Boar was buried, and we stood in blind celebration,
I turned to what was once a page full of characters and heartbeats
to find the wind had taken them all.
I was alone; alone under the pine tree wall.
My breath thinned as the air thickened,
A voice spilled over the canopy where the flowers bloomed, like liquid
the language came from A Blue Jay, bigger than the sky.
His gravity was mountainous, and the world was its eye.
My gaze was forced, until I was no more real than him.
I sensed a struggle in his mind;
A message, that was desperate to be relayed.
We struggled together, playing tennis and chess at the same time,
until it all connected, the space between us linked by a single plane,
and once more, out it came:
"YOU CAN'T SEE MY HANDS"
But this time, omnipotent and engrained in a universal sound.
His beak and mine shouted in tandem.
Light engulfed him like a divine plan.
One quick turn of his wrists, to reveal the hands of a man.

Keegan Shaw 2/13/19