I Want Wolves To Go Extinct

Originally Published in Runt Magazine Issue #2

A child is an icon on a pedestal 

and nothing else matters

and nothing else should matter

but I still can’t find purpose. 

A river is a metaphor

my god, it’s so vapid.

Nobody reflects

more than I do.

The Buffalo used to roam

and it used to make me feel free

to watch the frontier 

from the page of a history book.

And the wolves used to taunt me

when I tried to move freely

but they howled with delight when I wore lipstick!

I was a dancing monkey,

a parrot, a clown. 

And I was the best in the business.
And I was adorned with flowers. 

And I wore the crown of thorns.
And the pope kissed my feet. 

And the Beatles said I was more popular than Jesus. 

And Black Flag made an image of me naked and tied up and 

put it on an album cover to prove something to someone,

but I never knew what was being proved to who.

I saw my image on the t-shirts of teenage boys and on the lips of teenage girls. 

The hatred bound them together,

sexism died because of me

and love bloomed from my corpse. 

I was Jesus and Courtney Love and Charles Manson tied up with a neat little bow.

But my friends, the wolves, 

(Aristotle would call this a friendship of pleasure)

forgot that I used to be 

a child 

on a pedestal 

who understood rivers.