Verse & Scrawl

As hard as we try to distinguish ourselves from the animals, humans have a compulsion to associate with them, to flock like them, run like them, eat like them, devour each other like them. Our globe is the largest zoo in the solar system, and it daily displays disparate connections to a beastly kingdom, wherein we rally behind animals representing our states, and in many ways we assume, nationally, the personas of them. From Canadian beavers and Saudi camels, to the cows of Nepal and Indian tigers, we build, wander, sustain, and hunt. We cannot help but feed on the food chain of peoples, indigenous or otherwise, while some animals dominate for a time, until time itself tires of their antics and another beast moves in to rule, again just for a time. Even we, as mascots for sports teams, emblazon our national plumage in uniformity, as the animals of the world gather under this flag or that flag, this banner or that one, pissing on this tree or that monument, or that border by this river, to let the world know what we think is ours. In a world where brown bears and bison feed on each other, and imperial dragons stalk and surround black bears, we watch, selling tickets to the latest performance, where pug-faced dogs nip at the heels of Siberian tigers, thinking themselves larger than they are, or where lions hunt gazelles, naturally, but only with the assistance of the brown bears, dragons, and yippee dogs, and the occasional appearance of a leopard lurking in the shadows. In a zoo where eagle talons grip and squeeze the appendages and tails of other mascots, drawing blood that shines like rubies, emeralds, or onyx stones depending on the light, whose nests are built from ancient twigs, whose trees were chopped and burned, and yet we, menagerie, accept this way of doing business in the jungle, for we are no more human than we were before.