Ode To The Warning Mocking Bird

           (Dopple are Borged)

 

 

 

     I ventured a beer with ‘the grey,’

checking myself regular in case of

   over familiarity,

 

     first time see - noting that,

I was the alien here, I was the guest,

 

     It didn’t seem at all ‘any’

kind of fear or new experience,

     it was as if I was here all along and then,

 

   ‘I was!’

 

     There was a World I once knew,

she looked like this world, smelled so similar,

many animal flora fauna and tree,

much the same but here,

     there was something so……………

 

     ……….where were my children,

my wife, and what was that sickly taste,

   a taste in everything as if from a mortuary?

 

     As the Grey revealed themselves and

I began the notion of being kidnapped,

   I wondered my own children, my wife and then,

        the fear bit as if an ancient Tyranosaurus

     ‘they’ could re-introduce at will.

 

     They all smiled at me in the bar,

my smile returned - becoming like fixed porcelain

and just as cold,

   they were smiling and humouring my comical way while -

knowing my wife and children were some

     light years away.

 

2.

 

     They ‘grey’ were fixed in human but I could

see them underneath and they knew,

 

     I made farewell and left the bar,

screaming inside ‘where are my wife and children?’

 

     I look at the kebab shop,

I see them smiling at me through the window,

   ‘I could live here but not, not without my family.’

 

     The meat has that taste,

it is familiar but again a hint of a perfect nuisance -

   like a child that knows how to ‘cloak,’

how stalking be the hobby everyone knows but me.

 

     I am struck by my mind charade that,

        ‘they are all grown up Boo Radleys and liken

             me as their favourite Atticus Finch they won’t kill but;-

                   mock!’

 

     “You are the closest we’ve experienced for being

            our equal” Boo Radley said.

 

     “how did you know our game?

          We were Frankensteins Monster too and

               of Mice and Men and you, we favour now,

                    You may now populate with this gift.”

 

     I reply solemn and tearful,

          ‘I don’t want to, not no more, not with what has been

               your barbarity of wit for the past fifty years,

                     thanks for your kindness,

                          thanks for what you thought of me,

                               from very, small.’

 

Michael J Waite 7th March 2023.