Bird is dead.
The sordid utterances harping on
the statement written fifteen feet high
on a school building’s brick facade
don’t change anything

Bird is dead.
The countless articulations scattered
through Main Street America, or
just the parts that give a damn,
can’t bring anyone back to life.

Bird is dead.
Body buried, coroner clocked out,
and countless tributes and tears
mark the facts as true ones.

But when that record spins
and that needle hits
and that baseline kicks
and that sax starts to blow,
Bird Lives,
And there’s nothing you can do about it.