Bird Strike

We need them to arrive like moving ink from the sky

We need them to gather tiny bits of us in their beaks

We need them to be all shapes and sizes, fights put on hold

We need them to grab our clothing, hair and skin, it´ll hurt

We need them to pull us up from the streets of the yawning capital

We need them to carry us up above the trees and the continuing windows

We need them to keep lifting, so that we see all those towers from above

We need them to carry us out of the smog and over our building sites, up to the aeroplanes

We need them to carry us, screaming and laughing, no doubt wetting ourselves, along through the sky-smears of vapour trails

We need them to make us hover near great twirling engines, make us hear that great noise, see a middle-aged man chomp on a sandwich, he hasn´t been lifted into the sky by birds

We need them to teach us what it means to shit over the land whilst riding the invisible concourse of thermals, waves and particles, differing slabs of curving land not as important as the sea, not from up here, no, and we forget our guns

We need them to take us up and along and through the most terrifying party we have ever been to, us, all of us who happened to be on the streets of London at that particular hour on a Tuesday morning, a party that will stay beating in our breasts long after the birds have wiped our memories and set us safely back down, sore, pecked and confused, beating in our breasts til we die