pub. 11-10-23 - 262 words

Nature favors not my soul
	For she has placed me
	In this hominid’s body.
A masochistic mechanism
	Maladaptive under the rigors
	Of the busy everyday.
Living beings at large
	Were not made for this junk
		I long for simplicity
	That which is found
		Licking itself.

The hours I spend worrying
	About meaningless things
		Such as the poem I have yet to finish
	Are milliseconds in comparison to
		The minute you sat on my lap.
Your supernatural empathy
	Wet, your pink nose
		Can smell my pangs of anxiety
	And you eat them, ravenous
		Like your big cat cousins.

With the spirit of adventure
	You scour the house
			For walls to stare at
		Boxes to inhabit
			And bugs to fight.
An inexhaustible curiosity
	No need for textbooks
		(That is what The Man
	Wants you to learn!)
		Only pure mind.

Content—how are you so
	Content all of the time?
		My mood is the wind—unpredictable!
	And the lightest zephyr
		Topples my routine.
But you, O feline
	Yawn unquestioning
		An untouchable schedule
	You know your purpose
		It is to exist.

O, never have you been embarrassed to exist
	I cannot go outside
		What if my hair is upside-down?
	I share more genes with you than my peers
		How they like to remind me of it!
My species is an injustice
	I try to resign as a human
		I meow and walk on all fours
	But they tell me to go back to AnthroCon
		And shove the medicine down my throat.
A human can quit life entirely
	But they can’t change species
	And that’s the rub, isn’t it?