Two Poems by Amira John Isme

I must look silly
walking around
having arguments
with myself.
It's just
I have so much to say
it just keeps bleeding
out of my mouth
like a chicken
with its throat cut
and I don't eat chickens
or things that bleed
and now plants are talking
too.  Trees communicate.
They feed old stumps,
like fallen brothers
and chat about water
so is that like bleeding?
Are berries like babies,
like cherry red wombs?
Can you still eat them?
I am a eater of death.
This is just one conversation.
One.

Amid the gentle winter rains the sparrows flit around gathering in the yards.                                                              On the porch they eye me from outside. 

                                                           Inside it is said to be warmer. 

It is drier. It is also said: from love the world is born,
by love it is sustained, towards love it moves,
and into love it enters. 

I say our Father turns a blind eye sometimes, and the pain
is left to dissolve us; of self, of wealth, of faith. I am stripped bare.   

                                                         The boundaries disappear.

 I can hear your thoughts whispering in my head now.
I love you, I hate you, I need you. I feel you in your fear                                                                                                and I feel you in your love. 

                                                         Then you are gone. 

I am the soil dark with knowing. Then a single glade of grass                                                                              reaching towards the sun  and drinking you in like air
and breathing you out under the wings of birds. 

                                                            I am the sparrow. 

I cock my feathered head and listen to the heavens bells.
What is pain, what is wealth?  What is fear, or love? 

I do not know,  but faith is a baby bird leaping from the boughs.