1. |
The House
01:20
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There is a house on the hill
which flutters with strange sounds,
like psalms being sung
by hummingbirds.
No man or woman
goes in or out,
no post is delivered
to the mailbox.
Sometimes I sense shadows
of songs being sung
from the windows of the house,
but I know these are only tricks.
One day, in the cool, dry air of autumn,
I lessened my pace as I passed by.
Small silhouettes flitted to and fro,
and snatches of music floated atop the breeze.
I walked up the pathway,
to see what I could
of this mysterious and lively
structure.
What I saw was baffling: the house
was not a house at all. Rather,
it was made entirely of birds.
It was a House of Hummingbirds,
where Word and Song combined,
and I could not split them apart…
like an atom that refused to bend
to the will of its tormenters,
or like the perfect symmetry
we wish we all sported.
The forest beyond the hill is quiet.
Now, let us explore.
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2. |
Future Son
02:34
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Future Son
Plank-deck hobby sparkling relentless,
you ride – a silhouette against the grey, a pirouette
of flippancy amongst the greens, an accent
on the acuity of yellow sun-rays.
Follow the cement circuit; breaker
of the breeze, you are of timeless continuity. Step
off hard, the seashell-aggregate will push back,
propelling the plank forward into this keen contrast.
Vibration of the wheels over rough
pavement will stall the movement of oiled
bearings. Get them, the hallowed blank spaces
that emerge from the textures of the clouds.
Alight, and chase the spectres
which burn relentlessly in the hearts
of the crows, spraying music into the branches.
Climb toward epiphany, future son
and do not fear the crows,
for the notes will strike the strings – not
the other way around. The bend
approaches, feint slightly, lean into
the embrace of gravity, and remember
your gewgaw-ish frictional quality
which spurs all men and women against you
willingly; do not alight lightly.
The epic awaits you, future son; one day
you will know why crows remain in the
branches, why they seldom speak
unless threatened or mating,
and why the wheels beneath you
will never stop burning track-marks into
the concrete. One day you will know all this,
should you choose to accept it, and you will then
be a friend to the music inside you.
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3. |
Broken Glass
04:08
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Broken Glass
I wish you knew what your words could do.
I wish you knew what your words could do.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
Cracks are spreading, time is running out.
Cracks are spreading, time is running out.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
Oh, this heart: shattered now, there are only shards.
Scatter them, spread the love in each fragment.
I wish you knew what your words could do.
I wish you knew what your words could do.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
Cracks are spreading, time is running out.
Cracks are spreading, time is running out.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
I am made of glass, and you’re a sledgehammer.
My love will cover this earth
as shards of glass.
And I hope your pain will heal,
and may you understand mine.
May your heart soften.
May your sledgehammer dissolve
and may love dissuade you
from the seduction of hatred.
In the end, we’ll all be ground to dust,
and your hammer will fall for the last time.
I hope that, by then, it will no longer be a hammer,
but a warm hand outstretched and ready to give nothing but love.
In the end, we’ll all be ground to dust.
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4. |
The Myth
03:00
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The Myth
It is easy to remember palm trees
flying past in the dark of night, but not
what they looked like. Their fingers
must have reached to us, grasping
for a chance to be mobile, on the move,
like we always were.
“They” is a better word, since
most of my time passed by within the confines
of a pair of ear-sized speakers.
I opened Pandora’s box
for hours on end each night, allowing
sonic truths to float through my brain, while palm trees
raced after my friends.
My memories are holograms.
I disagree with the myth.
I wanted to combust.
I still disagree with the myth.
I often dreamed of a stage
lit with pillars of fire and light-beams
of heavenly strength shining upon me.
I could never see the rest of the band
in my holograms. The palm trees continued to grasp
for a chance at movement; they waved gently
outside my window, beyond the worn pane of glass
and the checkerboard of the screen,
begging me to include them
in my dreams of fame and fire.
I imagined myself sitting upon a miniature throne
in the back seat of a metal carriage, while each of my advisers
commented on the oppressiveness of the night air.
I imagined myself seeping through the cracks
in the hardwood floor – as if it were bad concrete
with weak aggregate – of my bedroom,
taking Pandora’s box with me, and delivering
bits of truth to the curved fingers of each tree
while sliding through chlorophyll-saturated veins.
I have been reaching for them ever since, trying to find
the truth in the myth
of adolescence.
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5. |
In Need of Color
04:56
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In Need of Color
Lower your fists!
There is beauty in everyone.
There are reasons for all of us to exist.
There is beauty in everyone.
We’ll raise our hearts, lower our fists.
Some days, I want to pull all these plugs.
Not in self-destruction, simply in disconnection.
Some days, I want to run away
from all this sadness, from all the pain I see.
I cannot connect.
I cannot connect.
I cannot connect.
I cannot connect.
(We need more color!)
There is beauty in everyone.
There are reasons for all of us to exist.
There is beauty in everyone.
We’ll raise our hearts, lower our fists.
Tell me everything. Tell me all of it.
Tell me what I can say, tell me what I can do.
Tell me all of it. Tell me all of you.
I want to know the burden. I’ll help you carry it.
Help me connect.
Help me connect.
Help me connect.
Help me connect.
I want to know how it feels
to blend in with the darkness.
I want to know how it feels
to be invisible.
I want to know how it feels
to stand tall and with strength.
I want to know we’ll feel
when we open our hearts.
Come take my place.
There is beauty in everyone.
There are reasons for all of us to exist.
There is beauty in everyone.
We’ll raise our hearts, lower our fists.
Instead of shining in the sunlight,
I need to feel like I’ve been snuffed out.
Because that’s what you feel, and that’s what you know.
Come take my place, come take my place.
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6. |
Powderhorn
04:23
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Powderhorn
The park’s name is Powderhorn,
which often makes me imagine dragons
composed only of the sugar in Pixi Stix
as if they were torn open and splayed out
in rainbow arrays of sour dust.
My sister and I used to make ourselves
dizzy and nauseous by spinning each other
around and around
on a huge disk with handholds.
We held on to the bars while my mother or father
or nana or papa launched the disk into circles,
and it always seemed to feel to me like time
was suspended in the midst of our rotations.
I wonder what would happen if I spun on it now,
wildly and with abandon. Time might warp
and fold onto itself, and I might be teleported back
to the year 1999: the brink of a new millennium.
The park was painted orange and blue
back then, and the paint was fading and chipped
in many places. Now it is a fresh composite of green,
which matches the trees and hedges surrounding the park,
and beige, which almost blends in with the sand.
But it is still lonely, the way that a blade of grass,
taller than all of the others around it, catches one’s attention
for a moment and is quickly forgotten.
There used to be a ficus hedge that ran along the border
between sand and grass, and behind the swingset.
It must have been slain while I was away;
how attached we grow to the objects of memories.
My sister and I used to try to swing high enough
to vault over the hedge, but I don’t think
I ever had the courage to actually try.
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7. |
Vista
04:37
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Vista
A landscape exists within me.
My heart is a cloud that rains upon the soil.
It spills its bitter precipitation
with little regard for the flooding that may occur.
I have no levies to stop the torrent.
I have built no dams.
I have little choice
but to accept the maelstrom
obliterating my landscape.
Every last scrap of my will is torn away,
and the pain becomes a heavy distortion of reality.
To realize that one is simply a mouse
is to understand the nature of prey.
I am the mouse in the grip of the boa, only able to observe
and experience my total and utter destruction
at the behest of her coiled emotions.
Tighter, ever tighter am I squeezed.
She is the coiled boa. I am but a small rodent in her grasp.
I feel her grip tighten, even as she draws away from me.
The wind leaves my lungs and spills across the land before me.
I fill the rugged, bitter soil with my pain. I caress the sinister blades of grass
with my despair. My inner light is growing dim, and my song is fading.
She is the coiled boa. I am but a small rodent in her grasp.
I will sing this song desperately to the battered landscape that is my soul.
No! I will shatter what is left of my old self as she slithers away.
I will gather the shards of my integrity,
and I will construct the strongest levies,
dams, walls, barricades, barriers, and floodgates
that my inner world has ever known.
I will stand the test of time.
A New Great Wall shall surround my heart.
Inside the Wall shall stand a kingdom of hope.
The livestock roaming free, the gentle breeze
jostling the branches of the trees, the fields sweeping
across the horizon in never-ending emerald.
My pain begins to fade, but still yet I feel
the bitter sting of guilt, like an ember on my skin.
She was the coiled boa. I was a small rodent.
No longer will she dominate this throne: my heart.
My hope will stand guarded by the wall around my heart.
My hope will stand feebly in the wake of a maelstrom.
My hope will not be crushed by the grip of a boa.
My hope will overthrow my pain.
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8. |
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Burn Through the Artifice
Detritus devolving, concrete infinity, burn
through the artifice. Find nothing that can stop
the onslaught of the laser that bores into ice,
shattering the consciousness of the elite
in one fell swoop.
Burn through the artifice.
Standing is more work
than infinity would ever admit,
especially on the feet of silence.
Muse-speaker, cite an artificial blank
and ride onward into the swooping ice-fall.
Grasping for inkwells, the palm leaves
slip on puddles of beaming sunlight. Sing
onto a ballpoint pen until all can be found
within the flattened carcass of an idea. Burn
through the artifice.
Standing on infinity works
if silence allows infinity to speak.
Beyond-traveler, hold the hands of the cube
of ice which melts in puddles of heat.
Empty glasses seem to sparkle
relentlessly in the corners of the concrete.
Where shall the poles retreat to in the dead
of wintry elitism?
Standing on infinity
is harder then you’d think.
Burning through the artifice.
We are all on the brink.
Burn, Burning through
Burn, Burning through
Burn, Burning through
Burn, Burning through
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9. |
A Floridian Scrapbook
11:30
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A Floridian Scrapbook
There is no winter here. The summer is eternal.
If one listens carefully, one can hear
the subtle wingbeats of the birds overhead.
Those black birds ― numerous
and nameless ― stalk the skies
that are so serenely spotted
with sculpted, billowing clouds.
One tends to wonder, during the eternal summers,
why the birds don’t get trapped in clouds. As
a child, one asks these sorts of questions. As
a poet, one returns to them.
There is no winter here.
No gentle snowfalls blanket the landscape with silence.
Christmas feels no different than the Fourth
of July, some years. The summer is eternal. The birds
continue to swoop and dive through landscapes
that are sculpted by faceless men.
They sometimes forsake the company of the clouds
for the canopy of castles. The men are numerous
and nameless, and they shape the world
around the passerby. One wonders
why the hedges don’t rebel
against their abusers. As
a poet, one asks such questions. One notices
that the roadsides collect dust and grime
over days of rainfall, but are only pressure-cleaned
every few months. One wonders
how the roads feel about being so filthy. One wonders
if the pressure-cleaners hurt. One wonders
how the roads endure ― driven over and stomped on
and bombarded with water that they never asked for. As
a child, or a poet, one asks such questions.
The dead, stale air of the summer clings to one’s skin.
The summer is eternal.
I don’t know where I’ll go from here,
but I know what will remain:
the palms and beaches are still in my heart,
even though I’ve sworn not to return.
I know I’ll be back. I’ll be drawn by the breeze
and the smell of saltwater seas.
I can still feel the sun
forever calling me home.
How the rains cleanse us,
it is difficult to know.
Salt spray is alive in each drop
of condensation, and they sparkle
as the hologram of my soul.
I walk out into the dampness and hear
distant music.
I would like to capture it; I would like
to make it mine. I would shape the sounds,
and make them cry. I would squeeze
every last raindrop from their eyes, and taste
the salt that hovers within each one.
I would sing the palm trees to life
with my thunderclaps, harnessing
the energy I would capture.
The music would tickle the edges of the sky,
and cleanse them, spreading
each singular musical memory
through the particles of salt
that fall from my eyes.
There are always outliers
atop the hedges, jutting tendrils
of leaves which refuse to obey.
Through the gaps in the ficus,
the occasional car
passes by, leaving air molecules disturbed
in its wake. The sound is like a dissatisfied beast,
grumbling as it is awoken from its slumber.
How green and blue can clash
so much, it is a mystery, and why
they have such simple names is also
unknown to me.
Rebel branches are reminiscent of fingers, reaching
into the expanse of sky above and defying
the shapeliness otherwise imposed on the ficus hedges.
The air smells of suppressed serenity
here; whispers that have smells, and smells
that have whispers, waft to my tympanic membrane.
The vivace of the birds is unceasing.
It is the march of the living, defying the beasts,
and embracing the gentle battle of green and blue.
Harmony is a side effect of discomfort between equals.
The trees have taught us this, yet we forget it
when the holes in the ficus hedges reveal the machines.
The outliers only want freedom, and I say let them be.
But, inevitably, the hedge-trimmers will come.
All around me, shining,
is an endless green,
until the sun-stained shores
at the edge of the sea.
Can you feel the sting
of the lashing surf?
Can you hear the voice
of the ocean, risen?
One day, the rain came violently.
It was a siege
upon the landscape,
water-bullets
flung from Gatling guns.
The sky-guns continued to open fire
pummeling the hardy blades of grass.
The sun-soaked skies gave way
to the harrowing aggressions
of atmospheric soldiers.
One must look directly at the clouds,
which are revealed by the absence of light.
Note the gaps in the stars above.
There are ever fewer stars
each time I revisit this latitude.
There are ever fewer stars
in my sky.
As a thunderstorm rolls in, I feel
the inexplicable need to run out into the rain.
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10. |
Verse for You
04:14
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Verse for You
I remember
the first time I saw you
walking through the halls and looking down.
Your hair was disheveled
but not without some order,
like you did your best to hide your inner burdens.
You looked up for a moment
to check your surroundings
and you saw the smile I couldn’t help but wear as I walked by.
I looked down at my feet
to hide my flushed complexion.
Your beauty and your stress were both compelling.
I knew that I was in for a challenge
or maybe a chance at love but we
both know that a pane of glass that’s cracked will break.
And now it’s months later
and we’ve left scars to prove
that we “loved and lost” and all of those clichés.
Where there aren’t scars there are scabs,
and I’ve picked at them for weeks,
leaving all the usual wounds of the past.
And with every day that passes,
I’m seeing bigger shadows
in places where they’ve never even been.
It’s your ghost that haunts me everywhere,
and even though I see you,
your shadow still persists.
So I’ll stare at you each day
and every time you smile
there’ll be shades of red and pink that fade to grey.
Your colors are bright today,
but by tomorrow they’ll start to
wash and fade with the rain.
Because it’s coming, the rain,
and nothing can stop it.
I watch the clouds roll in and hold my breath.
Until we fade, and wash away.
Until we fade.
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11. |
Dear Friends
02:09
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Dear Friends,
I hope these words reach you well. I’ve been forming this message for a while now, and I’m sending it encased in a bottle of hope. Each word is a tiny piece of balsa wood in our model sailboat.
This is a delicate message. I pray it does not break before it reaches you.
Keep reminding yourselves
that the world is beautiful.
Keep reminding yourselves
that people are good.
Keep reminding yourselves
that life is a precious gift.
We will only change this world
through our willingness to love.
Our ship is not sinking; this I promise you. Our ties bind us closer than ever before. We are not failing. We are not losing. We are patching our sails, filling the holes in our hull, and raising the anchor. This ship will sail again on the winds of love and compassion. We will always rebuild what is destroyed; this, I promise you.
Keep reminding yourselves to smile.
Keep your chin up, as they say, and
meet anger and hatred head-on.
Embrace those who would do you harm.
Smother evil with kindness.
Shine light into the darkest recesses
of our collective human condition.
Bare your heart to the world
and let your love shine
like the blinding center of the universe.
Burn so brightly with happiness
that every black hole in the cosmos collapses.
Overload the darkness.
Challenge them to contain you.
Do not be afraid to wear your heart on your sleeve.
In fact, let your heart grow so large that it encapsulates your entire body. You will glow. You are starlight. Tattoo love upon your body without a single drop of ink. Your every step will carve compassion into the collapsing hearts of those losing hope. The surface of this earth is ready to shake and tremble with your magnificent strides. Eyes open, hearts open wider, and we will make a difference.
We will sail onward into the blackness. It shall never contain us.
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House of Hummingbirds Ann Arbor, Michigan
House of Hummingbirds exists to burn through the artifice of the digital age and reconnect with the beauty of human
emotions.
Evan Zegiel has been writing poetry and lyrics for years. He is primarily an orchestral tuba player, but has been playing bass and electric guitar for about the same amount of time. Merging those skills resulted in the birth of House of Hummingbirds.
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