SHRIKE

SHRIKE

first laid
eyes
on
you

you love
imprinted me
like a
new-born
chicken

and here I
am
  stuck in
a novel going
nowhere

sprearing
    useless pages
on a spike
as if
   I were a
horrendous shrike

tiny
   but different bird
altogether

Vlad Impaler
of all
   God’s little
creatures

come
   pull this stake
out of my
heart!

I am
   not a patch
on Shelley’s
Skylark

Keat’s
Nightingale

his
   consummate Hyperion

or novel
of other worlds infused
with these mythologies