i was the war in the hole at the center of their peace.
I was ape moving into evolution, ten rungs up and climbing,
and no one would acknowledge me there all fancy
in my slick pelt and tool-imminent hands,
so I started howling and it was good rain
on a parched desert, but they wanted the dam
more than the flood and they jeered me.
They jeered me and seized me and dressed me
in the horns prescribed by tradition
and laid guts of homicides and suicides across my back
then drove me into the wild outlands
where I scrape and crawl and try to shed the regalia
of their hand me down shame, and they try to forget me
and it looks like they’ve won,

but they’ve still got the hole at their center,

and I’m snickering
because out here
I’ve learned
to chip stone into knives
and to speak.