"In the eyes of a nighthawk"
Liam Loughlin
All we are lies in the eyes of a Nighthawk,
The one at the counter,
Harassing the waitress
and putting three too many packets of sugar into a coffee;
Gone cold over his grabs at attention.
You see him now, the one waiting to head to his night shift,
2.5 kids at home and resentments pilling up under the skin,
Collecting in the wrinkles brought forth
By having to see someone so small in the reflection of an empty plate.
He didn't know the power he had over us.
It’s strange that a man so comprehensible
Could be the final arbiter of us.
How is he supposed to relay our story
If he was not there when creaturehood came for me,
And not for you
Cast out into the street from a quickly closing window
I looked on as silhouettes came together.
My legs felt like clay, still soft.
Torn from the earth by blind hands,
At the mercy of old sorrows awoken and,
Untrained in the art of a subtle touch.
The hands of such an amateur make no final correction
Twisting and pulling, unwilling to bring this to an end
unwilling to accept the way I bent.
I have to wonder if the Nighthawk can sympathize
But I know he doesn't know the pain of walking yourself home
With your body shaped to the will of another
And the knowledge that you are a statement.
One passed down in breathy aimless voices,
Clawing at their skin in order to drain the cortisol
And rest for a moment, their faces soon lost to the Nighthawks.
Replaced by something important, things like chapel aisles
Or school gymnasiums, you know, the places we dare not go
As we are an unbroken chain forged through a history of twig piles and filicide.
A lineage connecting boys who never reached manhood
But diverged down creaturehood and into an unmarked grave
Far from the family plot
How can I expect such a simple man,
To understand why I walked confidently to met this broken body
Like meeting an old flame for coffee
Can we trust him to care?
Is it wrong of me to need him to remember all those times we were here before?
I need him to remember that late night in December.
When he walked in to see us across the room from each other
And hatred, the kind that only comes from a dog whose devotion was met with abandonment,
boiled up inside of me yearning to take flight into the air
populated only by the sounds of a waitress trying to secure her 20 percent.
I didn’t think you still came here,
In those blue months, when you were at rest in bed with something safer
And I was still adjusting to the feel of my own sheets,
Just letting boxes pile up
From a move many months ago.
I need him to see the way we both sat alone
I need him to see the reason you were my hill to die on
It’s a shame I can’t expect you to tell it
At least not in a way that matters
Not in a way that brings creaturehood to light
Such a waste that you refuse to elaborate
On the nights where we sat in silence,
Both wondering if a life can grow from what we have,
If nighthawks were right to look at us as nothing more
Than travelers from Gomorrah
Calling sin to settle in the rolling hills their children walked.
It’s a pity you two will make my funeral comfortable for them,
And allow the Nighthawks in ill-fitting suits with tacky ties
And last names not lost to our lineage;
Greet my life with an elegiac tone
Instead of one of shame and guilt
It doesn't seem right to leave out these little details.
Where will they go, these thorns that build the rose?
Do they go the way of my breath?
Slipping out for good, caught up in the ceiling fan above.
Will they grow stale under these fluorescent lights?
When the world casts its judgment on what we were
Will you join me and leave those memories to rot in your studio apartment?
Until it is cleaned out and over the stain you left on those walls,
Some art major hangs his tribute to what they own.
To Nighthawks his strokes with a brush will show a whole story
One, in reality, of late nights, and a bitter tolerance
Only brought forth because the world has told them their bodies are puzzle pieces
And in their boredom and arrogance, they will make the pieces fit,
Because they were told they were meant to fit.
But when my picture hits their screens
The black and blue of my neck
won't tell them of a boy, starving, lashing out at his only food,
Because it was poisoned long ago.
Your handy work won't tell the story itself, my love
Paint them a picture they can't ignore
And show them how our pieces connected
Without the need for pressure.
. . .
In the eyes of a nighthawk
Lies very little.
Even as two creatures tear each other apart
Teeth entangled with arteries,
And airways crushed like soda cans
He hides
For creaturehood is a concept too large for the Nighthawk
He is a simple man
And these boys wrangled with forces that had years to enroot themselves beneath the skin.
In the eyes of a nighthawk, that night was merely murder
He doesn't see what brought us all here today
He doesn't see his role in this
He doesn't see how those 2.5 kids killed me
Or how his two months rent atop her finger
Wrapped itself around my neck,
Coiling tighter for each time she introduced it before him.
He doesn't understand that when he repainted the nursery,
From pink to blue,
That he was condemning a stranger to be nothing more,
Then another link in the chain
Passing, only to awaken this in someone else,
Building our lineage.
The world is always so much simpler to Nighthawks
They could witness the words of a man long passed,
Murder someone right in front of them
And they can pass it off as something so trivial.
How comfortable for the Nighthawk.
Liam Loughlin
All we are lies in the eyes of a Nighthawk,
The one at the counter,
Harassing the waitress
and putting three too many packets of sugar into a coffee;
Gone cold over his grabs at attention.
You see him now, the one waiting to head to his night shift,
2.5 kids at home and resentments pilling up under the skin,
Collecting in the wrinkles brought forth
By having to see someone so small in the reflection of an empty plate.
He didn't know the power he had over us.
It’s strange that a man so comprehensible
Could be the final arbiter of us.
How is he supposed to relay our story
If he was not there when creaturehood came for me,
And not for you
Cast out into the street from a quickly closing window
I looked on as silhouettes came together.
My legs felt like clay, still soft.
Torn from the earth by blind hands,
At the mercy of old sorrows awoken and,
Untrained in the art of a subtle touch.
The hands of such an amateur make no final correction
Twisting and pulling, unwilling to bring this to an end
unwilling to accept the way I bent.
I have to wonder if the Nighthawk can sympathize
But I know he doesn't know the pain of walking yourself home
With your body shaped to the will of another
And the knowledge that you are a statement.
One passed down in breathy aimless voices,
Clawing at their skin in order to drain the cortisol
And rest for a moment, their faces soon lost to the Nighthawks.
Replaced by something important, things like chapel aisles
Or school gymnasiums, you know, the places we dare not go
As we are an unbroken chain forged through a history of twig piles and filicide.
A lineage connecting boys who never reached manhood
But diverged down creaturehood and into an unmarked grave
Far from the family plot
How can I expect such a simple man,
To understand why I walked confidently to met this broken body
Like meeting an old flame for coffee
Can we trust him to care?
Is it wrong of me to need him to remember all those times we were here before?
I need him to remember that late night in December.
When he walked in to see us across the room from each other
And hatred, the kind that only comes from a dog whose devotion was met with abandonment,
boiled up inside of me yearning to take flight into the air
populated only by the sounds of a waitress trying to secure her 20 percent.
I didn’t think you still came here,
In those blue months, when you were at rest in bed with something safer
And I was still adjusting to the feel of my own sheets,
Just letting boxes pile up
From a move many months ago.
I need him to see the way we both sat alone
I need him to see the reason you were my hill to die on
It’s a shame I can’t expect you to tell it
At least not in a way that matters
Not in a way that brings creaturehood to light
Such a waste that you refuse to elaborate
On the nights where we sat in silence,
Both wondering if a life can grow from what we have,
If nighthawks were right to look at us as nothing more
Than travelers from Gomorrah
Calling sin to settle in the rolling hills their children walked.
It’s a pity you two will make my funeral comfortable for them,
And allow the Nighthawks in ill-fitting suits with tacky ties
And last names not lost to our lineage;
Greet my life with an elegiac tone
Instead of one of shame and guilt
It doesn't seem right to leave out these little details.
Where will they go, these thorns that build the rose?
Do they go the way of my breath?
Slipping out for good, caught up in the ceiling fan above.
Will they grow stale under these fluorescent lights?
When the world casts its judgment on what we were
Will you join me and leave those memories to rot in your studio apartment?
Until it is cleaned out and over the stain you left on those walls,
Some art major hangs his tribute to what they own.
To Nighthawks his strokes with a brush will show a whole story
One, in reality, of late nights, and a bitter tolerance
Only brought forth because the world has told them their bodies are puzzle pieces
And in their boredom and arrogance, they will make the pieces fit,
Because they were told they were meant to fit.
But when my picture hits their screens
The black and blue of my neck
won't tell them of a boy, starving, lashing out at his only food,
Because it was poisoned long ago.
Your handy work won't tell the story itself, my love
Paint them a picture they can't ignore
And show them how our pieces connected
Without the need for pressure.
. . .
In the eyes of a nighthawk
Lies very little.
Even as two creatures tear each other apart
Teeth entangled with arteries,
And airways crushed like soda cans
He hides
For creaturehood is a concept too large for the Nighthawk
He is a simple man
And these boys wrangled with forces that had years to enroot themselves beneath the skin.
In the eyes of a nighthawk, that night was merely murder
He doesn't see what brought us all here today
He doesn't see his role in this
He doesn't see how those 2.5 kids killed me
Or how his two months rent atop her finger
Wrapped itself around my neck,
Coiling tighter for each time she introduced it before him.
He doesn't understand that when he repainted the nursery,
From pink to blue,
That he was condemning a stranger to be nothing more,
Then another link in the chain
Passing, only to awaken this in someone else,
Building our lineage.
The world is always so much simpler to Nighthawks
They could witness the words of a man long passed,
Murder someone right in front of them
And they can pass it off as something so trivial.
How comfortable for the Nighthawk.