Notes About The Poem
I think it is also a Catalogue Poem.
Pyramid Scheme
At the top, the lions
sit in their sun throne,
manes lit like sanctioned fire,
deciding who eats,
who breeds,
who is cast into the dust.
Their roar is law.
Their purr is permission.
Their hunger is inherited,
never questioned,
never earned.
Not gods who crowned the Lion King,
but the man of god who said: yes, this is he—
the one who eats,
who wears his robe like a mane,
who roars and calls it destiny.
Below them, the lynx
moves like a sharpened whisper,
stalking what the lions never see.
Chasing,
cornering,
outrunning,
then cleaning its paws
with quiet satisfaction.
Predation as elegance.
Efficiency as creed.
The sleuth in the tailored suit,
the elegant spy with too many eyes—
so many angles of seeing
he can’t tell truth
from the uncouth.
Beneath the lynx, the python
waits in the underbrush of the system,
coiling around anything warm.
It tightens with every exhale,
every attempt to survive
becoming the next contraction.
Pressure as policy.
Suffocation as governance.
The hovering presence, always there,
watchers everywhere,
closer to your skin than air.
Below the python, the spider
tends its architecture of threads,
a lattice so fine
you mistake it for air.
It does not chase.
It does not strike.
It simply waits
for your struggle
to reveal your location.
Entrapment disguised as structure.
The architect of forms and files,
keeper of the grids,
the one who calls the web a system
and your struggle “non compliance.”
Under the web, the dog
returns to the hand that bruises it,
tail low, eyes soft,
trained to confuse cruelty
with companionship.
Loyalty weaponized.
Obedience harvested.
The faithful worker,
the bruised believer,
the one who returns to the hand that harms
and calls it home.
Below the dog, the rabbit
trembles at the shadow of a threat,
heart collapsing
before the teeth arrive.
Fear as contagion.
Panic as inheritance.
The trembling citizen,
heart racing at headlines,
collapsing under the shadow of threats
that haven’t even arrived.
At the bottom, the mouse
moves through the dust of the world,
small in a landscape
built for predators.
It is not weak.
It is simply outscaled.
Consumed not by failure,
but by design.
The worker in the dust,
the parent counting coins,
the one who disappears into the cracks
because the world was built without space for them.
And beneath even the mouse,
the ground itself
thins,
cracks,
gives way—
a foundation eroded
by the weight of the pyramid
pressing down
on every living thing
that is not a lion.
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