To Kill a Buzzard

To kill a buzzard–is it a score
For your heaven or hell basket?
Only catch, never release
He didn’t steal nothing
Doesn’t matter birdie didn’t sing like you liked
Must’ve forgot here it’s
Shoot or be shot

Hope is spelled in an archaic hand
Divine it to me and I’ll
Relay it to this land
Does it translate? Does it compute?
Ask the buzzard, where’s the proof, where’s the proof?

Mid-flight runner, by a different name
Any diffеrent place you’d soar like thе honeyhawk
Never to choose to disobey the rule
Of when you hear the click, stop-
When you hear the click
Trophy kill or carrion
Happened to be you they picked to glue their fear on
No one more scared than the vigilante
And no one more wrong
Pin the tall tales on the kills of the summer
Spread mount, frame, and lock them in the cupboards
Do you sleep better little gunner
Like with a fake dream catcher
Above your headboard?

It only takes two finches to make a charm
Is how I sleep instead
But in your bed you rest right through it
Here revulsion is a feeling that doesn’t apply
In a southern dream
In a southern dream

What happened to this land’s fertility?
Its womb’s trademark hospitality?
Are we better known for our balms
And elixirs, saps, molasses
Sassafras, tall grasses
Or the snake in the crop?
The food in our trough
Is the word around my town
Quoth, “it’s safe in the south”
Same neck of the woods
But a different plot

Georgia borders, ancestral hoarders
Can’t you spot the specter dimly
In the corner?
Chanting at its deafness
History’s defect. Mine
The faith that if I carry her to term
She will deliver me in return
But I was reared here
I was reared here
I was reared here
I was reared here