silence, ho

i won't bore you with the details but, i am on the move yet again.

where i was is no longer safe, so i shall have to be somewhere else.

i wonder, before i go.

how can those who choose to hold those foul avians even pretend to be human?  how can they pretend to belong to a higher cause?  to be a higher life form?

they are debasing themselves.  they are becoming a tool to an animal.  less than human.

and yet, there are those who consider themselves blessed.

a holy birdhouse, if that.  nothing more.

do you know, little nests, what happens to a shell like you that loses too much structural integrity?  what happens to a nest that takes a shotgun blast to the face, perhaps?  or a full body roasting?

you are food.  like all the other unworthy.  you are a useful fur coat.  you are useful camouflage.  you are a pack animal who deems itself a temple.  nothing more.

peace, break thee off

i imagine some may wonder why i am giving so much a fuss over birds

after all, i myself confess to having slain scores of them.

in truth, killing birds is never the problem.  hollow bones.  flammable wings.  a bird can be broken with such accidental ease.

there is a force.  a mind beyond our own.  a soul with many bodies, as many as it can claim.

that is my foe.  others call it what they will.  i first encountered it with crows.

thus, i call it the murder.

as many birds as are slain, as many of their vile devotees, filled with the foul fowl themselves i have burned and shot and run over with farm equipment

in the end, the murder lives on.  breaths on, because it is not a bird.  it is a will.  a force behind them.

perhaps it has a form.  perhaps there is a face to the murder.

i do not wish to know it.

there are times, i think, i have caught a glimpse of the true enemy.  you can see it when they make lightning.  a spark of the divine among the brute intelligence it has claimed.

'tis beautiful, to be honest.  and maddening.  much like the nature it commands, the merest glimpse  of it put spots on the vision of my mind's eye.

but that is a tale for another day.  one i have been putting off telling.

i am not the hero of my story, you see.  much like lear, i was deceived, and the true hero was cast away to her fate.

i merely live in her memory.  live for her memory.  she gave her life for mine unworthy existence.

'tis the least i can do to prolong it.

exit, pursued by a bear

i had to run today.

a man came to my door.  he looked like a policeman.  wanted to ask me some questions, like what i was doing there.  wanted to see my identification.

when he saw it, he told me to get down on the floor.  he pulled out handcuffs.  he said i was wanted for murder.  and arson.

i will not deny the arson charge.  but i am not guilty of murder.  you can't murder something that's already given its life away.  you can't murder in a war.

so i kicked him in the testicles and rushed past him, running for the door of my apartment building.

i am lucky the doors are glass.  otherwise i would not have seen the blackbird-covered world lying in wait for me.

i turned quickly, and saw the policeman walking towards me.  he did not have a gun, he had a knife, and he was slowly stripping off his jacket.

"you can't outrun the heavens, little crocodile."  he said, tearing his shirt open and sinking the blade bloodlessly into his chest.  "they'll always be watching over you."

i ran towards him now, brushing past him as the first beak began to prod its way from his flesh.

i think he believed me helpless, my only choices being to face the heavens or die in my windowless room.

he underestimated me.  i came back with molotovs.

that's another arson count for me. 'tis a shame, i liked that place, too.

i don't know if i killed the birds.  maybe i did, maybe i didn't.  maybe they can't die.  or maybe it doesn't matter how many birds you kill.

because the flock will never end.

but throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey

ornithophobia is not a fear i ever particularly saw myself having.  younger, i may have scorned it.  why would anyone fear a bird?

now that i possess it--however justified it may be, i lament on just how crippling it is.

you probably do not remember the last time you saw a bird, because they are, simply put, everywhere.

think about just how many birds there are, even now, in winter.  think of how many birds there are in your city,  your town.  you cannot escape them.

wherever there are people, there are pigeons, and if not pigeons, then gulls, and if not gulls, then murder after murder of crows.  the town i was raised in was famous for crows.  crows everywhere.  crows always.  their incessant cawing was a comfort, when i was younger.  i took solace in them.  they're bright birds, did you know that?  some are even better with tools than primates are.  and yet, so misunderstood.  so reviled.  what outcast would not want to become a crow?

now, they hold no mystery, no appeal.  no bird does.  the elegant swan, the peaceful dove, the rambunctious crow, all give me dread in the place of wonder.  true, not all of them hold the same terrible force that drives those i flee from...but how can i tell which flock can split the heavens and which is simply driven by brute consciousness?

i think we take birds for granted.  true, these days we do not have much to fear from them, but we forget about the mighty terror bird.  we neglect to remember how the more terrifying of the thunder lizards are the modern avian's close relatives.

i fear i'm rambling.  it's hard not to.  i'm finding this is my only release.  i have been taking shelter, when i can, where there are no windows, though i hold no illusions that they cannot simply find my door, veiled in the willing flesh of a traitor to our species.  most probably, a traitor i once called friend.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CROCODILE TEARS, a hapless rogue

CORDELIA, a young, popular student

REGAN, an unpopular student, friend of CROCODILE TEARS

GONERIL, CROCODILE TEARS' best friend

MACBETH, CROCODILE TEARS' beloved

POLONIUS, a professor of literature

GLOUCESTOR, a school principal

TAMORA, a witch

IAGO, a warlock

ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, parents of CROCODILE TEARS

ASSORTED TEACHERS

ASSORTED PARENTS

CALIBAN and SYCORAX 

CHORUS

SETTING, a high school in the midwestern united states, a time not so long ago

Act 2, Scene VII

LEPIDUS
What manner o' thing is your crocodile?

MARK ANTONY
It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad
as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is,
and moves with its own organs: it lives by that
which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of
it, it transmigrates.

LEPIDUS
What colour is it of?

MARK ANTONY
Of it own colour too.

LEPIDUS
'Tis a strange serpent.

MARK ANTONY
'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.