Flock
Pack
Herd
Flamboyance
Dazzle
Forget the name…

(What's in a name, anyway?)

These might as well be called
Clouds.
Enveloping and engulfing and encircling and enclosing
Each brilliant and luminous sun
Is their one and only purpose.
Looming ominously over each ancestral clade
And waiting patiently for the final sunset.

Sure.
Give in.
Let your false sense of comfort drown you
And trap you in the Abyss.
Let your untamed hunger of fitting in consume you
Until you are nothing but crumbs
Blown away by the passing breeze.

Your fear is not about being devoured.
Rather
About being spewed, heaved, vomited
– Excreted even –
From the Body,
The protective collective Body.

(Perhaps a visit to the zoo will clear things up.)

Here we are kids!
Over there!
You see that?

The Flock of pelicans,
Soaring high above all others
But
Dreading the moment they’ll have to lead.

And the Pack of hyenas,
Cackling hysterically
But
Miserable nonetheless.

And the Herd of bison,
Hefty and hardy
But
With no real reason to live.

And the Flamboyance of flamingos,
Standing tall
But
Not proud.

And over there!
That mirage...
The typhoon of broken colors,
Like some masterpiece-gone-awry.
Black paint-streaks sloppily smeared across a stained white canvas.
Or is it white on black?

Who cares?
It’s just another drifting Cloud
Keeping an eye out
For the final sunset.

But over there
Sprawls the most golden of all suns,
Lying bruised and rejected,
Spit out
By all the others,
With her tusks and warts and facial "mistakes,"
Her permanent mementos
Of the trials we all face.

And she's beautiful...