snap shots of despair

I listen a woman speaking to chicadees
on her back porch
so no one thinks she's absurd

she says,"tell me why
I'm broken?

"tell me
why you sing to me?"

They look at her tenderly,
as if every one dared love her
just as much as me.

I hear lady crying
by her kitchen window
when a deer trots by outside

she begs, "tell me why
every thing's so broken"

"tell me
why you come to me?"

He looks at her so sweetly
as if a deer could love her
more perfectly than me.

I notice an elegant woman's fury
in a lounge on the lower east side
as her last sip of beer goes warm

she sighs, "tell me why
you can be so bitter.

tell me why
you're the last thing i remember."

As if the beer were Buddha
and his belly grown so thin
i wish that i were him

I speak to the first cloud
alone atop the mountain,
(so no one knows I'm mad)

"tell me why
everything around makes me blue."

"tell me why
i love you."

The cloud floats silently
over the endless prairie
every answer in his fog