Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing this poem today.


https://www.arielchart.com/2020/09/when-parakeets-disappeared.html

When The Parakeets Disappeared

I remember what you were,

although I dreamt of you becoming

something else.

I recall your actions of brilliant deviltry,

while wearing so well your anthropoid sneer,

remaining so nonplussed while I bled.

You brought home to me two parakeets in a cage

during one of your rare, dolorous frames of mind.

But, I learned that you were

a bungling traitor on whom

I had wasted worthy love while

smothered beneath your lustiest mockery

of expressions of affection.

I also discovered that you

sought to use the birds  

as a means to confine me, as they themselves were confined,

and all heard my grief.

I thought your shallow inputs to help 

cure my oblivion were real.

But, your sad and cruel refusal to abjure trickery

showed the truth.

You promised to re-orient yourself, but continued 

to rule your roost,

laying down petty rules,

as if formulated by an emperor.

Your haughty fabrications

brought me to the point of leaving the cage door open,

and as I exited through the front door,

those beautiful birds, now free, chirped,

and I felt no despair, pain, or anger at their escape.

We all got away,

and all heard my relief.