Pacing beside the fields of somewhere else.
To walk with weights tied around my hips
As a horse or some other animal of burden.
Why was I not an oxen-
birthed to be fat and happy,
dumbly discouraged from an education;
calmed by an electric wire,
buzzed into simulation.
Why was I not a bird-
fitted with air-filled bones,
heavy with feathers, puffed
with sensation;
the called out ones.
Or a candle-
stiffly holding shape under heat,
centered with a cord;
giving way slowly like a cat in water
gripping the raft, gripping the raft-
with every hope bent upon the
unkempt claws dug in.
Why must I be an
Orangutan,
a frumpish pear-shape with dwarfish arms
to drape stupidly over an uneven body,
inept for any use in propulsion?
stagnant in brains,
collared voice on a chain,
a sweet nexus altered.
Yet I find myself in the land of the living.
amongst models of seasons
amongst an overwhelmed shelf,
amongst will-call;
an ink-stain of improperly removed
security devices blotting out
so much of my memory.
But an orangutan. The Orangutan.
the awkward body shuffle of a crowd
pre-destined to see a Holy Light-
looking forward; always forward;
always forward.
always forward.
isn’t it something:
never upward.
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