Open Text For The Elitists

What kind of turtle are you
that you have such a sturdy shell
but won’t stick your neck out at all?
What kind of crab are you, claws out
and scuttling away in every direction at once?

Zoology demands explanations
for such adaptations —

your tossed-back eyes,
your slight but telling
head toss,
your half-raised hand
flicking contrary voices away —
but you have none.  What worked once
doesn’t now.

How will you ever develop
crucial hybrid vigor
this way? Your contempt

is staggering and would be
laughable
if it wasn’t so damnable.

One day,
you’re going to see them
standing over you with
cooking utensils or
cages, and you’ll wonder
how this could have come to pass
on your perfect island —

and they’ll tell you

it was the horizon you never saw
and how it encircled your entire world
that made it so easy to sneak up on you
and leave you nowhere to run.