The Circle of Life: The Crocodile's Verse

The Circle of Life: The Crocodile's Verse 

Come little fishes
Adore our golden scales
And smile
It's easy to flit between our claws
To grasp the tidbits...dangled
So enticingly out of reach
I dare you.

And if you fail
You should have swum faster
And if you fall
We will crush you

Come little fishes
Imagine your scales turned to gold
And rejoice
Our riches could be yours
If you work forever
Or win the lottery
We rigged just for you

And if you fail
You should have worked harder
And if you fall
We will crush your family

Come little fishes,
Cry all you like
We don't need to make the water drinkable
Your tears overflow our crystal glasses
We don't need to have the water wadeable,
When sweet oils fill our swamps to overflowing

And if you drown
You should have grown lungs
And if the rivers should fail
We will eat our fill

Come little fishes,
Not much longer now,
Offer your puny lives
And we will give you
Everlasting
Death

A.J.

Part of my Circle of Life series, this began as a simple poem, but keeps on growing. We can do better, we can bring voices to the table, create a more equitable world, but not when we incentivise people to look after money and not people.

1) The Circle of Life
We have let the snakes 

Into the hen house...

2) Circle of Life II (Snakes in the Henhouse)
Too long
We left the snakes in charge of the henhouse...

3) Circle of Life 3: The facts of life
I know you've heard
There's a new snake pimped out on the lawn...

But however dark it may look, there's hope on the horizon. What do they always say?  "it's always darkest before the dawn" Of course in the physical world, we don't all need to battle against the night to have the return of day, but this is a metaphor here...

Have a great week
A.J. Ponder

Articles of Faith: Part 1: Pirate's life & Part 2: How Doth the Deinosuchus

Articles of Faith

Part 1: Pirate's life

Hey Jollies,
it's a pirate's life we wanted,
with ne'er enough rum
to splice the mainbrace,
although our articles
were a work of faith,
when the land
was ruled by golden sharks.

Hey Jollies
it's a pirates life we live,
with never enough rum
to splice the mainbrace,
as our articles,
are pitched,
and long broken,
against a tide of green


while we dance silent and
barefoot amongst the flotsam,

and the gaping jaws of monsters
bellowing loud enough to break the heart...

Part 2: How Doth the Deinosuchus

How doth the Deinosuchus
Improve his shiny tail
And poor the waters of denial
On every platinum scale

How sadly doth he sympathise
How neatly spreads his claws
And welcomes all the foolish in
With gently smiling jaws.

A.J. Ponder

More pirates next week. Dancing Pirates. I hope. The last part of Articles of Faith - which is about right, because it's an act of faith, given all I have right now are notes, despite having had this one on the back-burner for a while.

Moreover, I hope you enjoyed the reference to Charles Dodgson's work. I've always taken by How doth the Little Crocodile. So much so, I think it was the first poem I ever learned by heart. Although I suspect that the main consideration was the length, the warning of lurking danger in apparent beauty never gets old. Watch out little fish, and have a good week!

A.J. 

P.S. Articles of Faith Part 3 is here at http://anafflictionofpoetry.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/articles-of-faith-part-3-dancing-pirates.html