Fish In Some Kind of Water
This picture DOES NOT go with the poem–I just like it.
Fish In Water
We feel
like a fish–
I use here both the royal ‘we’
because I am gold, and
the collective ‘we’
because that was how
I was schooled.
We are not out of water
but tanked.
Our owners, easily tiring of the tedium
of our boxed obliviousness, feed us repeatedly
just to see us fetch.
Sure enough, we’re fired up
by the flakes, swish for the catch
in the mitt of our hinged-jaw maws–
The taps feel to us
clapped applause
even as they shake us
to our cartilaginous marrow.
‘My turn’, ‘no,
my turn,” regaling and hailing
until the sounds dumb
to a clouded sky
with only occasional
dandruff, the food of random
passages.
Too much–too little, but still
too much,
until our sheen slimes,
scales bloat, and patches spread
over our once-rich red,
patches pale as the underbelly
of some creature we wot not–
Something is very wrong here,
more than just
fishy–
***************************
A rather strange one, probably linked to nowhere!
Explore posts in the same categories: dog, elephants, poetry
Tags: manicddaily, Not actually in Denmark poem, Something fishy poem, tanked poem, We are royal we fish poem
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
ManicDDaily 
May 14, 2015 at 12:18 pm
Yes– ‘just two(million billion) lost souls/ swimming in a fish bowl, year after year’–and making it just about as dirty. You get under the scales of things here, k, and make us think about the cost of swimming for the biggest flakes. I loved the plethora of puns (or word plays if you, or we, prefer) unleashed in this—wait, can you unleash a fish??
May 14, 2015 at 12:19 pm
You probably can unleash these. Thanks. k.
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 1:18 PM, ManicDDaily wrote:
>
May 14, 2015 at 3:14 pm
Ah I get the political nature of the first part, and we keep falling for the little flakes they toss, and how they tire of us. We dirty our water just as much as well. I wonder how many can actually see the glass walls. Fun piece.
May 14, 2015 at 11:24 pm
Oh if only there was a we–enough of a we to promote right sharing of world resources instead of sickening on over-satiation and consumerism. How well you lead us into the same tepid and slimy water of the fish.
May 15, 2015 at 8:32 pm
right down to the marrow–liked that and this a bunch!
May 18, 2015 at 9:13 am
Interesting poem, K! “Strange” maybe, but i like it…flakes of truth here.
May 26, 2015 at 12:16 am
love the goggled elephant too ~