POEM: Running Like Chickens With Their Heads Cut Off
Have you ever looked a chicken in the eyes?
Most of us city folk probably never have
Where are you?
Chickens can look quite different in the city
Just the same
Their bodies run around
Like death will catch up with them if they slow down
Their heads flit about
Ensnared by nothing at all
Abiding mirror fax of life
Who has got one’s back?
Missing only you, won’s greatest faux
Possessed by a vacancy
That will soon enough be dismissed
Wading for something more
Unable to see what’s beneath their own feat
Where we are grounded
Still, six feet is better than two
When it’s not yours!
As if one May fly!
To live but for one day
Today
Even four proves oddly better
Fore what can thou dust do, in turn?
Don’t you see?!
Chickens re-member!?
They are almost everywhere
Though they are practically invisible where I live
So I am bound to run into more than a few
Even more so if you cross to the other side
Just, please, don’t bother asking me why
I must
Have chickens
Incite me
To a whirl
Without
Chickens
Running about
With their heads
Just being
Cut off
Like trafficking enflesh
I wrote this poem a while back, but thought that it might be a good poem for the month of May, given the reference to the short-lived May fly. Nonetheless, this poem fits on a long-standing theme, particularly for those living in Western civilization, of busyness and not being present in the moment. Like many of my poems, you may have to read it several times, because it involves a lot of puns and multiple meanings depending on how you read various phrases. It’s difficult for me to comment on longer poems, because I end up commenting way, way longer than the poem itself. Sometimes I like to leave the poems to speak for themselves. Still, I think it’s probably comment on one strain in this poem. The phrase: Still, six feet is better than two is a reference to being buried 6 feet underground and a reference to a chicken with its head cut off lying on the ground looking at the 6 feet of three other chickens and taking some small comfort that it is not their two feet that they see in their last moment of life. Also, this is an allusion to the apparent ease at which we will trade other people’s lives for our own. If you find this somewhat morbid, then take some comfort in the line: Even four proves oddly better. In our fixation on the quantitative in our culture, it might seem odd that four is actually better than six. However, the four refers to two sets of feet and a pair of chickens or people. This refers to the comfort that we find in companionship with one another. This value of companionship strikes a sharp contrast to the hurried busyness that tramples our presence of any given moment, and rushes by authentic relationships with others. In this crazy world, which may seem dangerous and short at times, especially if you are chicken, companionship and solidarity may prove to be the reason or purpose in our lives. I guess the message is: pay attention to the people around you. Oh yeah, you may want to pay attention to the chickens around you as well.
