The men bring petals to their lovers while staying loyal to their wives; here come
our flames, they’ll teach us latticework,
uneven brokenness.
Which is labor, a job we quit long ago. There’s only two virtues worth cultivating:
magnificence and grace.
Or we worked super hard on our symmetry, our dark brown eyes, unique among
fairywrens for looking alike,
men and women so exactly fireworked.
We warn all the other birds, everyone understands our songs. My wife tells me I shall not respect frames,
she sings frames are extra stupid.
Then be in the torsion of montane forests, utopias or carnivals you find ways to come home.
All those there’s are here’s.
Hugh Behm–Steinberg’s books include The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press) and Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) as well as several chapbooks including Sorcery (Dusie Chapbook Kollektiv) and Good Morning! (Deconstructed Artichoke Press). His most recent chapbook is The Sound of Music (Dusie Chapbook Kollektiv).
He is the author of two libretti: Terrible Things Will Happen But It’s Going to Be Okay: A Donner Party Opera with composer Guillermo Galindo, and a children’s opera based on the Chinese folktale, The Clever Wife, which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera for their Opera to Go series.
Behm–Steinberg collaborates on text/sound art projects with Matt Davignon under the bandname Oa. Their first album, Oa, was released on Edgetone Records in February 2015. He is currently collaborating with his wife on an illuminated manuscript reworking of Farid ud-Din Attar’s 12th Century Sufi masterpiece The Conference of the Birds.
In 2015 his short story Taylor Swift won the Barthelme Prize for short fiction. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in creative writing at Stanford University and the recipient of an NEA fellowship.
He is a member of the Unranked Faculty Collective Bargaining Team at California College of the Arts, where he edits the journal Eleven Eleven.
Water flows at peace
What a magnificent lake
Beyond the mountains
Blue Bird on a tree.
Picking berries from the tree.
Now flying away.
The Bird Sings Loudly
Outside Where The Blue Sky Is
To Become Free
Dark as Night, chilling
You never want to be Left
Crows have you in sight
Bird sits on a tree
It wants to take a short nap
Wakes and flies away
Open your wings bird
Feel the coolness hit
water for your precious need
water hits first
feel the cool and breeze
Bird be you be free
Raven needs no champion
Whisper to fallen souls
As black as midnight
freshness of water
feel the cool feel the breeze hit
Bird be you be free
Pretty Bird
They call me pretty bird but,
I fly higher than the others
So it seems they only see my colors
Call me what you will
But know that I refuse
To listen to you fools
Be selfishly amused
I am much more than a pretty bird
Because I can fly high
I am much more than what meets the eye
Wings are optional
But flight is almost certain
A blind leap of faith
How busy you are
Buzzing here, there, everywhere
Good bye Hummingbird
Blue, yellow, black, and green
In a place that grows evergreen
Thats one lucky bird
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj8oMPQx8vKAhVU3GMKHcaUBpAQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.download-free-wallpaper.com%2Fimage%2Fbirds-wallpapers-free-download40okwulwoi&psig=AFQjCNEUyddecZqdDE7kcFtunj2j8Ty2YQ&ust=1454037941819240
Fragile it may seem
Naughty tails may paralyze
One little giant
Family of three
Until one can leave the nest
And his own begin
I wrote this for a bald eagle.
“A predator hunts
From high above looking down
Prayer for the prey”
Waterfall flows so free
Light glistens the blue water softly
Life takes a screeching hault
Picture of a Tree; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree#/media/File:Ash_Tree_-_geograph.org.uk_-_590710.jpg
Standing In The Sun
Its Presence Always Remain
In The Winter Sun
From afar it sees
Fiercely catches it’s weak prey
Feeds for another day
Birds are beautiful.
The way that they fly so high.
I just want to fly.
Enchanting pathway
Leading to a peaceful feel
Fresh lavender plants
Orange flowers all around
As the sun shines bright
Lovely and delicate of them all
Bird fly freely now
feeling the wind in the sky
with feathers so light