The Sigh of White Chickens

I don't want to be the reddest berry on a cherry tree,
Less the crows notice me
and peck me to death in bird-sized mouthfuls,
until I've bled dry my scarlet juices and hang,
kernel part-bare of flesh, like a skull cracked
open
with the brain half exposed.

I don't want to be suffocated under tabletops,
with a tight view of the underworld of shoes
ashamed of their secret odd socks,
bearing one scratch, one scuff too many,
scars that poverty inflicts, belying the miles
and miles of pointless pavement pounding
on an unchanging landscape,
their only destination the ignominy of defeat.

Why take the front seat on a bicycle made for two
kidding myself I have an unimpeded vision and a
scenic view?
Sooner or later it will be uphill and just as I run out of puff
I'll turn and find you long gone,
that all this while I've been peddling alone.

I've always counted on laying my eggs
in neat rows of three.
Even numbers seem so dull and inevitable:
Romeo 'n Juliet,
Bonnie 'n Clyde,
Sonny 'n Cher,
you 'n me.
I want to admire them in their singular oddness for a day,
catch them in solitary gleaming by starlight,
full of the promise of regeneration and
a crack at the world, decked in alternate plumage.

But for all my labour they remain unhatched,
their iridescent glow cools and hardens
till one by one each becomes stone;
so Creation is forever robbed
of the song of unborn phoenixes,
and all that remains, in supersonic hum
that only babies and dogs can discern,
is the sigh of white chickens living pent up dreams.