It’s not sweet as the Asian koel’s song.
The red-wattled lapwing voices its irrecoverable loss.
The bird’s sorrow scalds the night.
It was brooding in the serene scrape nest.
The black blotchy eggs camouflaged with the pebbles and sand,
yet they weren’t safe from the predator.
The motherese and the fluttering dream in the shell ended in an omelet.
The hunter never enjoys the art on its plume
and the charms of its black-tipped red bill and long slender yellow legs.
He mistakes everything in nature is for his pleasure.
The avian anguish doesn’t roust him.
His heart is so, the real and origami birds are alike.
Its doleful cry continues,
darkening the moonlight.
Who cares for it in the world of hunters?
First published in The Literary Hatchet
Let me speak of words
Those machines of evil!
The cogs and pulleys of influence,
drumbeats of the longest march
called the human endeavor
First heard as motherese,
later teaching the ABC's
They fill our ears with lies,
and our heads with alibis
They drape themselves in tinsel,
bedecked with popular acclaim
All the while concealing the poisoned talon
O beware of words!
Take care to use with deliberation,
as they hatch from the mother egg