Henry’s Birds

What are these birds doing
in Henry’s poems
just south of San Francisco,

filling the sky with their flying,
attacking a blonde on the bay,
blades of fighting roosters?

The school children running in horror
away from W. B. Yeats,
poetry eats.

The birds bust into houses
like Fiona Apple in panties,
they kill an old man.

They claw their way into a convertible
and make off with the driver
like pterodactyls.

Alfred Hitchcock in cameo roles
plays a tree or a fence.
Mr. Bones’ birdbrain bounces its ball.

Henry tries to get the feathers
out of his poems,
but, too, many words get in the way.

After the birds are gone, Henry realizes
that every single human being
has had his eyes plucked out