Mockingbirds Collection, pt. 4

This is another series of poems from deep in the vault (sometime in 2012)! The collection was inspired by the poem Mockingbirds by my good friend Katie Wisnosky, which serves as the first of the four poems in the collection. Each of the subsequent poems was written in light of the previous entries, and the result was four poems which are all wildly different from each other, yet still retain a strange cohesiveness built on a series of recurring images: a thematic watermark, of sorts. Enjoy!

Mockingbirds Collection, Part 4
by Laura Sciarpelletti

We are mockingbirds,
mimicking the sustained melancholia of our peers
with turn-over retrospect,
breaths and breasts beaten by weather,
unoriginal but original design.
We perch unwanted,
waiting for the inspiration,
the next stolen voice.
Flapping like thighs, wavering like lies,
living Darwin’s influence and the transmutation of species.
We carve each other up in our beds,
breathing our songs into each other’s mouths—
our stories, our worries, our refusal to accept chance
but dwell on the purpose—the desperate carnal urge to
inspire and sustain ourselves in the hearts of lovers.
Let our brothers and sisters fly with us,
making distance across our Earth—
soaring down alleyways at midnight, lit up like the fire in our souls, the
burning biting jolt of ambition.
Let us shake the cores of our towns with the blazing beauty of
twenty-somethings; questioning injustices with college-induced
knowledge and opposing opinions,
symbols on our foreheads, not of the Beast but of the Beat.
Let’s howl through the streets of our towns,
tearing up inhibitions and limitations,
chanting theories and whisky-soaked philosophies,
flapping with souls elevated like mockingbirds.
Skies filled with potential:
Our futures.

Click here for other entries in the collection:
Mockingbirds Part 1
Mockingbirds Part 2
Mockingbirds Part 3

[Image Credit: Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. http://www.repstl.org/news/detail/the-poignant-and-timely-to-kill-a-mockingbird-continues-the-reps-50th-season%5D

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