When a caged bird's neck gets twisted,
the whole world looks.
When a living bird's cage rattled,
its whole world shook,
but the world world did not look.
Talons clipped, eyes gauged, body crooked,
shaking as if the world lived while he was perishing.
But he was alive, and that was that:
People speculate the caged bird, with its externally caused pain,
and an image flashed like some film --
like a picture morphing,
like a dead body decaying,
like a slave body burning,
like a peasant yearning, --
watching a genre reiterating.
Watching the caged bird burn,
people forget it once had feathers,
it once had talons,
it once had eyes,
and projecting this image of death
as if the bird did not live.
The same cage rattles,
as the bird suffers like a Phoenix:
it does not forget the pain
and it does not live a new life.
Same bird, same cage:
it all burns.
