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POEMS/POETRY- AUSTIN EDWARD ORCHARD-Thoughts Across A Lifetime

Thoughts of Experiment RES/42967-3 Can Primate
Ferd (Austin Edward) Orchard

My friend,
What am I doing here
In this strange world?
Fear, I sense, pervades the air that I  breathe.
I feel it deep in my throat
I can taste it.
Fear, always fear,
I hear its voice
Echoing the screams of torment
Of others with strange language.
But fear speaks with only one voice
From a thousand different throats.
Look to me my friend,
I cannot speak your language,
My words, though full of understanding
Honed by a millennium of expression,
Is to you nothing but gibberish.
So look into my eyes
And read what cannot be spoken,
For only your heart need reply,
For it is there that the answers lie,
The translator to all that you are.
Observe this face
So similar to your own,
But filled with pain and anguish.
Look closely my friend,
Is what you see right?
Hear my scream silently rush from my eyes,
See my torment, expressed by my writhing body,
Feel my pain as it seeps through my skin.
Look my friend,
I have done nothing to you
Except be what I am.
The Great Spirit placed me here,
I asked no questions.
All was provided;
Each and every one of us has a place
to be
Let us speak as equals
With terms of affection.
Talk of kindness with your hands,
Your fingers like ears,
Not hearing but sensing the beauty of life.
The warmth of compassion
That brings the light of understanding,
The realization
That though we are so different
We are so very much the same.
Why?
Why are you so afraid of being like me?
I don't mind being like you,
But unlike you I am quite content
Being me.
I see no shame in our relationship,
However tenuous.
My friend,
Dare I say kindred one?
Where did you go wrong?
I know that you have left me behind
With your smart ideas,
Your very clever dreams, so complex
They could never be.
Dream,
Yes, I dream, but simple dreams,
Dreams so simple
That you could not understand them
Not with your deranged mind.
Look around you my friend,
See what you are doing.
Ask yourself,
"Is this sanity?
Am I sane?"
Listen just for a moment,
Listen to the voices that scream at you,
Each sound a pointing finger of accusation,
Each torn and bleeding body
A living recrimination.
Surely there lies the reference line
As to the state of your soul?
It's not these poor beings
That surround me, whose eyes you have destroyed
Who are blind,
But you.
They might have been blind at birth,
But you have been blind since birth
And unless guilt and remorse restores your sight,
You will be blind for eternity.
My friend,
Why have you taken me from my home,
The great open spaces,
And put me in this place
Of pain and fear?
Why have I been locked up in this cage?
Why torture me so?
I cannot give you the answers you require,
My body holds no secrets that you can enlist,
So why all this pain?
How can you even begin to try and understand me
When you don't know how to care?
You can't even understand yourself.
You care for nothing but your own fear.
Your prejudices are as deep and as dark
As the great forests you destroy.
But that is just like you and your kind;
What you don't understand, you fear,
What you fear, you destroy.
What you destroy, you never replace,
You are the parasites of death.
My friend,
What drives your mind?
What makes you do what you do?
Why inject into my body
The diseases of your corrupt and sickened people?
You are worse than the malignant cells
That you have allowed to destroy
This once healthy body,
Now sick and wasted,
Racked with pain.
Do you have a family?
A home?
You see, so did I, until they came
Bringing death with loud noises.
I had a happy family
Within a stable society;
Free,
Self governing,
Caring and moral.
I loved my young,
I still miss my mate.
Yes, we feel,
We cry,
Laugh,
Fornicate,
Eat,
Bleed and die,
In very much the same way as you do.
We mate by instinct,
Just like you.
Love is as instinctive as fear
And both are as natural as the changing seasons.
Both we have possessed, like you
From the beginning of time
When you betrayed us all
And stood upright.
From us with all your tortures,
You have learnt nothing.
But we, my friend,
From you have learnt how to hate.
How you garnish your basic instincts
With words that hide the truth,
Have no meaning,
And are as restricted as your own
Diseased and warped minds.
Listen my friend,
I beg you,
Listen,
To the voice that lies hidden, deep,
Lost where you cannot reach
Your ancestral memory.
Ah, what's the use?
If you could,
Then I would not be here
And you my friend would be elsewhere,
Not doing these strange and evil things
That have possessed your very soul,
Driven you beyond the realms of sanity
Into the darkened world of commercial sadism.
Friend,
If it wasn't me you were debasing,
I'm sure it would be one of your own kind.
I feel so sorry for you,
Not for myself, even though I am in great pain,
Thanks to you
And death I cannot wait for.
The thing I most want now
Is just to die,
But in your selfishness,
You keep me alive.
Had I not wished for death,
Then no doubt you would have killed me outright.
How contrary the mind becomes
When tortured beyond its limits.
In my own world, life was all I wished;
Of death I feared.
Now I fear life and wish for death,
That cold loneliness of forever.
Come death,
Bring me freedom from this place
Of pain and fear and degradation.
I hear you call me now,
The rattle in my chest;
My eyes having spoken,
Rest their case,
I can do no more.

website © Alison Hammill
August 2003 - updated November 2008