The United States government murdered over 12 billion birds over the course of 1959 threw 2001. As they killed off the real birds they replaced thim with surveillance drone replicas. Indistinguishable from a biological bird. There are now no real birds left.  

–Official Birds Aren’t Real Informational Van Bumper Sticker 

vi. Plato’s Birdcage  

And, after all this cacophony of beaks 
and talons and dusking, dawning song,  
we return to philosophy with a bruised 
orbital and a spatchcocked consciousness.  
A leaky boat and a capsized ego.  
Grossly proud of his Republic, Plato  
purged us on account of our  

wings and trilling dispositions,  
locked us away in a studio apartment 
without rent control. Then worse, 
Oprah banned us from her Book Club 
when we weren’t even doing anything 
devious; Ginsberg was off in Tangier,  
and Dickinson had subsumed  

her passions into something beyond the  
body and its mess of sensation. It was 
wrong, but we kept writing, doing  
weird things to our readers, like telling  
them about the taste of an angler worm 
or the shamelessness of the mockingbird 
who refuses to cite his training data 

and many pirated melodies. Land ho! 
We wear our exile like magic robes 
and have a single spirit we coaxed  
into doing our dirty work. The landlord, 
Prospero, says we’re surrounded  
by a soiled ocean called asphalt.  
He keeps us up at night, desperately 

pleading for applause. The Republic  
isn’t any better with its dorky guardians  
and daily dose of surveillance. Plato recently  
outlawed mimicry, cut funding for the DMV. 
At least we have fun. Last week, Keats 
stole Coleridge’s stash of Opium  
and smoked himself into a goldfinch.  

Wielding a pretend militancy, we  
assemble on phone lines and salute: 
Yessir, Chaucer, the eagle has landed 
a lovely wife and a dead-end job. We chirp 
slant truth and await Nature’s verdict.  
We’re not perfect, but no one cares to observe 
us, not even the hawk, or the falcon.