2 Flies

The flies are angry bits of life;

why are they so angry?

it seems they want more,

it seems almost as if they

are angry

that they are flies;

it is not my fault;

I sit in the room

with them

and they taunt me

with their agony;

it is as if they were

loose chunks of soul

left out of somewhere;

I try to read a paper

but they will not let me

be;

one seems to go in half-circles

high along the wall,

throwing a miserable sound

upon my head;

the other one, the smaller one

stays near and teases my hand,

saying nothing,

rising, dropping

crawling near;

what god puts these

lost things upon me?

other men suffer dictates of

empire, tragic love…

I suffer

insects…

I wave at the little one

which only seems to revive

his impulse to challenge:

he circles swifter,

nearer, even making

a fly-sound,

and one above

catching a sense of the new

whirling, he too, in excitement,

speeds his flight,

drops down suddenly

in a cuff of noise

and they join

in circling my hand,

strumming the base

of the lampshade

until some man-thing

in me

will take no more

unholiness

and I strike

with the rolled-up-paper -

missing! -

striking,

striking,

they break in discord,

some message lost between them,

and I get the big one

first, and he kicks on his back

flicking his legs

like an angry whore,

and I come down again

with my paper club

and he is a smear

of fly-ugliness;

the little one circles high

now, quiet and swift,

almost invisible;

he does not come near

my hand again;

he is tamed and

inaccessible; I leave

him be, he leaves me

be;

the paper, of course,

is ruined;

something has happened,

something has soiled my

day,

sometimes it does not

take man

or a woman,

only something alive;

I sit and watch

the small one;

we are woven together

in the air

and the living;

it is late

for both of us.