Nine Crows

[Philatone]

hello MrA
some quick thoughts

I never told you about the vulture
that cut the sun in half the day we met; ...nice image, though what followed in the stanza lost some of the energy (the lines may have been dragged out a big too long)
its shadow paved my honest path
and I, with cracked feet and arid eyes,
blindly followed.

Did I mention the nine crows
that perch, sleep and dream of swimming
on the valley's ascending power-lines
with the deep hum of late night television
soothing through their toes? ...again, i'm liking the imagery. here, the last lines really grab the energy of the stanza

I will tell your absent ears of the nights ...interesting contrast of tenses (the past and the future) in these stanzas' opening lines. "absent" threw me off a bit
spent picking blood from beneath my nails,
t-shirts drenched in the souls of innocents...this line and up to the "bottles" lost me a bit
granted by empty bottles under boughs
of perched vultures
that are not willing to fly for me, again...an entirely aesthetic question: why did this stanza jump to 6 lines instead of 5? Does the last line have to be by itself? though it may work, just having the crows always "hang" around like that...

and how the crows are always there.

hopefully an idea or two can help!