"Give Me My Lovers" (aka Furry Concepts Poem) (2017)

A poem written after I began to interact more in the furry community, and became frustrated with the over-reliance on human mental structures, and the limited situations they could be found in.
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Give me my lovers.

Give me my octopuses, dying hidden and afraid. 

Give me squid, dying in the dawn light with fire in their veins, hearts in their throats. 

Give me obsessive bowerbirds, genius crows

Birds of paradise dancing their clawed feet to bloody ribbons, 

In search of that one perfect dance.

Give me abusive geese, pragmatic horses, falling in love.

Pigs become death, destroyer of worlds.

Frightening stepparent bro elephant seals

Hypochondriac harp seals, always for a cause.

Give me shaking, broken polar bears, so far removed they cannot see or feel or understand

The concept of loving more than your next hungry breath.

Give me troll skuas, fighting with frigatebirds across unconquerable divides.

Give me penguins handing over their jewelry so that their baby gets fed.

Give me horse honor killings

Watched by a cougar thinking of its cubs, its mate

Dead six months in prison, hyenas versus jaguars, and it freaked

Knowing the jaguars were outnumbered, it chose to beg.

Not knowing

Everyone heard.

Everyone.

The last thing it heard was the taunting golf clap of the pigeon guard

With enough jay blood in him to make him mean

Even as the cougar's yellow-speck eyes dimmed and died--

(Their neck snapped casually when they turned to lick their arm,

You couldn't have a better moment)

Give me worried wolf parents dropping their child off at college

"Text us EVERY DAY. Make new friends!"

Give me rabbit serial killers

Shrew and shrike took them down, Dirty Harry-style.

Give me my lovers.

Give me Army lions, home for a few weeks

Fucking hard, fast, passionate.

Give me bored hyena dominatrices.

Sisters, who got into porn for a quick buck

And weren't afraid to swallow the evidence, whatever it was.

Give me who they fought on their way up

A red-tailed hawk, quick and fast and smart

Not smart enough to take the money and run.

They didn't shit enough to bury her.

Give me hard-drinking cannibal detectives, turtles.

Give me a trans whale shark, hell, fluid

"You're a whale or a shark. You can't be both."

Give me a transitioning clown fish

Making their family anew to save it.

Give me anteaters, whispering as they press the pillow over their new child's face

"For heaven's sake, catch me...save me, for I cannot stop myself."

Give me the ball python doctor, the crocodilian responder

Both fighting every day, stereotypes.

Crocodiles weep when they see lives tossed away.

Lives that could be their children, but there are not enough males

Not enough females

Not enough eggs

Not enough children.

Give me the ball python jerking his hemipenis into the bed,

Hissing and puffing at nothing, sound and fury

Thinking of the mongoose down the hall

Give me the mammal-pride mongoose

Who sees the pathetic, unblinking eyes and the hangdog look.

Pulls down fifty grand a year and can't get a date, the coward.

The irony, like him, is no doubt delicious.

 

Give me my lovers.

Give me my worlds.