At midnight,
After the rains,
I spread my wings
And flew across
The wide road
Without any company
And there,
Was this board.

Sparrow trading

That’s good.

Trading sparrows.
Trading birds.
Birds to be sold.

I decided
To troll
Ravishankar aka Ra Sh
As a translator
And Babu Ramachandran
Aka Alberto Caeiro.

I entered
The Sparrow Factory.
The Bird Market.
Wholesale trading centre of birds
Without ringing the bell.

I did not want to
Wake up
Even a single little sparrow,
So,
I stepped in
Without a sound
Or even a thought.

There was no bird
At the gate
The watchman
A retired soldier
Snored.

I moved on.
There was no one.

Where did those two cat eyes go?

I pushed
The window
Open
Gently
And looked in.

A lad
Fast asleep
Breaking all grammar
In some unknown language.

Brother, brother
I called
Without the birds hearing it.

That
Unknown language
Blinked awake
And walked up to me.

I felt so sad for him.

I asked,
Softly,
Weighed down by guilt.

Birds?

He said.

Birds gone loose.

Birds gone loose?

Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose. Birds gone loose.

Every human being
On this universe
Sang
In many languages.

That
Birds gone loose.

Nothing more to say.

*You too can try these three things. Except going in search of those birds that have gone loose.

Kuzhur Wilson
Translated by Anand Haridas

Little Birds are dining
Warily and well,
Hid in mossy cell:
Hid, I say, by waiters
Gorgeous in their gaiters -
I've a Tale to tell.

Little Birds are feeding
Justices with jam,
Rich in frizzled ham:
Rich, I say, in oysters
Haunting shady cloisters -
That is what I am.

Little Birds are teaching
Tigresses to smile,
Innocent of guile:
Smile, I say, not smirkle -
Mouth a semicircle,
That's the proper style!

Little Birds are sleeping
All among the pins,
Where the loser wins:
Where, I say, he sneezes
When and how he pleases -
So the Tale begins.

Little Birds are writing
Interesting books,
To be read by cooks:
Read, I say, not roasted -
Letterpress, when toasted,
Loses its good looks.

Little Birds are playing
Bagpipes on the shore,
Where the tourists snore:
"Thanks!" they cry. "'Tis thrilling!
Take, oh take this shilling!
Let us have no more!"

Little Birds are bathing
Crocodiles in cream,
Like a happy dream:
Like, but not so lasting -
Crocodiles, when fasting,
Are not all they seem!

Little Birds are choking
Baronets with bun,
Taught to fire a gun:
Taught, I say, to splinter
Salmon in the winter -
Merely for the fun.

Little Birds are hiding
Crimes in carpet-bags,
Blessed by happy stags:
Blessed, I say, though beaten -
Since our friends are eaten
When the memory flags.

Little Birds are tasting
Gratitude and gold,
Pale with sudden cold:
Pale, I say, and wrinkled -
When the bells have tinkled,
And the Tale is told.

There are birds.
The birds are pursuing you.
The birds are silver
And their reflections
Are just that more brilliant
Gliding over the ocean.

It’s so beautiful,
But you don’t notice.
Because you don’t know
That the grass is green
Or that the sun is shining
Or that the birds are singing.

Only, the birds are singing…
Screaming, rather.

But you know it’ll stop soon.
And you notice
That you could be on vacation,
If it weren’t for the screaming silver birds.
But the birds will be silent soon
And silent birds make for crying women
And fatherless children.

You could be on vacation.
Because the sky is so blue
And the clouds are so white
Like the innocence you used to have.
And you wish you could smell the air.
But all you notice is the smell of
Fear and gasoline
And melting chocolate in your pocket.

The silver birds flying behind you
Are angry and they want you to fall
Out of the sky.
But all you know is that you want it
To be quick and painless.

The screaming grows louder
So you know your wings are hurt
So you dive. Unwillingly.
And all you can think about
Is your girl and how she’s going to cry
And how your boy isn’t going to know you.
He’ll just be told that you were a hero,
Not that you were scared of silver birds.

So the birds, both angry and silver, crash into the ground,
But the wreckage isn’t made of feathers.
All you know is that you wish it were.
It’s so beautiful
You could be on vacation
Because you’re lying in a field of flowers.
And they’re as brilliant as the ocean was.

But those flowers are burning,
And the sky is orange, the clouds ashen,
And the grass is slick with blood
And you don’t know where the ocean is.

So you realize that you’re not dead
Because you’re covered in red
And everything hurts.
And the screaming hasn’t stopped.
Your men are lying around you with torn feathers…

Bleeding.

The angry birds that brought you to this place
Are broken too. Fallen too.
So you don’t hate them anymore
Because it doesn’t matter that their
Feathers are different colors than yours.
Their girls are crying and their boys
Won’t know them either.

And through the pain all
You can cry is Mother, Mother!
And through the pain all
The angry birds can cry is Mutter, Mutter!
Until all the birds are silent.

It's quiet now...
You could be on vacation.

Thor is a place with birds in a pond.
Many birds; some small, some blonde
Few birds come as the seasons demand.
Come and visit Thor with Sanket to remand
All the known and unknown birds beyond.

Thor is a place with birds in a pond.
Let it be cashew or nut or almond,
Bring any thing for birds with monde
And see many types of birds beyond
The island, colours that birds donned.

Thor is a place with birds in a pond.
Few birds are black, and few blonde;
Canteen ready with food on demand,
Garden with plants having leaves frond,
Pond with birds different on demand.

Thor is a place with birds in a pond.
Security guards allow us, on demand,
To take cameras to view and shoot monde
Of varied birds here and beyond.
So, visit Thor with Pari Style in a pond.

fed the birds.
fed the birds a
book about
my dead  
weight.
fed the
birds a heavy.
fed them from
my thin
hands. The words
that live.
The birds ate.
The birds ate words that
lived and always
lived
in
separate
houses. if...
and i mean if
and only if
they
could afford
it.
if these
clever pagans
ever had
a dime.
they found
it boring rich
folk to
death.

i fed the birds
my indigenous
nomads. they dined
in high style...
dined black and
fancy
on
shabby
addicts, as they
hopped
trains . i fed the birds
my
swarthy tribe.
and they supped.
i fed the birds
a monologue
with trains of
thought
the words i fed
them... the vagabonds...
hopped
trains.

of thought.

I fed
the birds.
i fed the birds just
outside.
i sat
and fed them
black light and Harmalade
fed them blackly
fed them with
piano keys;  the black
ones, the ones
that radiate
i fed

i watched them. watched
them fancy peck. and peck
and fancy
pluck.
i watched. they dined
on serene defeat
by technicality.
it was surreal
to watch a blackbird
pluck from black
keys - peck
a morsel of glum
from

the black rays, yes.

the black rays with
opposable thumbs
and a
lifeline. the only one i
know forbidding gypsies
with three eyes.
an open
palm.
a paranoid  
black radish
white dwarf star
with piano keys
for black rays
of

nimbus, yes

mine is the hand that bites the hand
that writes the book
it wants
to ban, that ain't
a fan

not at all. just an appendage. a pen dirge ? What ?

i  fed the flock lots

I fed
the black ones -
with dolls'
eyes...

tucked
under
wing.

i fed them, yes.

a book
about the size
of any welcome
malcontent.

i fed
them sorrows
and ellipses with
adjacent lawns.
wutherings in
stately manors, squatting
on either side
of memory
lane, like
a bourbon and
coke had
practically crawled
across shards
of hard
things to break,
with a drink
in your
hand

and crawled, well blended

down the hatch
of enormous, well appointed
gothic frogs, that -
were mostly refurbished toads
with odd columns.

i fed
the birds,
broke out the
Good
Chi
na

hang the tantrums !  

yes
One should expect
a rich metaphor to want to
watch you
eat it's every
word
or
by extension;
lick the toad with 15 rooms,
three stories, unfit for children
and a full staff
of Adjectives,
highly trained
to

short-sheet the Bedlam, and fluff the pillories.

one should sip the liqueur
off the floor, inside the huge
and tipsy
gorgon
and be thankful
for the dank
and

the solid gold flyswatters.

they're complementary. take one
as you leave out
thinking
" toads, eat flies.... so it follows...."
apropos of nothing, on the
' Good China ',

now in the belly of birds, well fed
an unwell.

a book about
my dead-weight's
dream
to eat fewer
flies and
more
steak.

to grow wings.

yes.

Wind blows from the west,
Birds are returning back to the nest,
My heart is filled with a lot of interest,
With the events that had passed in the past,

Birds are thoughts which always fly around the nest,
The nest is my heart, a nest which always overflows with birds,
Each bird has its own color, a color which never vanishes,
Everyday a new birds enters into the nest,

Some birds sing song of melancholy, some sing song of joy,
Birds are not bored of singing; they keep on singing as long as
the nest is there,
Listen to the songs of these birds as they always teach you a lesson,
All these birds sleep on the ***** of the nest,

No bird leaves the nest unless the nest itself leaves the tree,
The world revolves only because of these ever living birds,
These birds are the most precious as they are very hard to get,
Long live birds, Long Live….a bird is singing

I followed him down the trail until we got to the mouth of the mines. The life and energy of the surrounding maples and birches seemed to come to a still and then die as we walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelt of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a slimy smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” He rolled his eyes.
“Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. In my blinding anger I lost track of his lantern. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I did in Peru.
I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere in front of me the canary chirped.

When I first got the job in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack said. He handed me the manila case envelope. “He’s lived in rural Vermont his entire life. Apparently his family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When the accident happened the whole town basically shut down. There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly after. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He ships them to other mining towns across the country now. We want to run a piece about the inhumanity of breeding animals to die so humans won’t.” I stood in silence in front of his deep mahogany desk, suddenly aware of the lack of make-up on my face. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”

“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers? Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.” Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me. He relit the oily lantern and turned his back without another word. I reluctantly followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” and hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants interspersed in-between. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good nights sleep and defeat this towns fear of John Delvos tomorrow.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag and pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC. I stepped out onto the dirt in front of my door and lit up. I looked up and the stars stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except it’s sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the stars dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Waters, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Waters, are you new to town?”
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
The stars tiptoed in their tiny circles above in the silence. Then, they disappeared with a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the stars dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Waters. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the cold dust beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed, “See that yellow notch?” Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to find out where to find this elusive Mr. Delvos and his canaries.”
“You don’t have to,” he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree, “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The stars dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary chirped and Delvos stopped.
“This is a good place to break out fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky this morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Waters.” Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I hurriedly stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased, “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers, I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with flickering yellow brushes and songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so of course I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the birds little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was ‘Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
The canary chirped, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines, but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?” He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast.
“Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Waters, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the CEO’s for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Waters.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Waters. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the little, yellow canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up and the memory of his green and brown wooded homestead fled from my memory as the mine again consumed my consciousness. Dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.
The canary chirped.
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelt of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The Canary was flitting its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminating the surrounding gloom. All was completely still and even my own vapor seemed to fall out of my mouth and simply die. The canary was dancing a frantic jig, now, similar to the mating dance of the Great Frigate Bird I shot in the Amazon jungle. As I watched the canary and listened to its small wings beat against the cold metal cage I begin to feel dizzy. The bird’s cries had transformed into a scream colder than fire and somehow more fierce.
The ability to fly is what always made me jealous of birds as a child, but as my temple throbbed and the canary danced I realized I was amiss. Screaming, yellow feathers whipped and the entire inside of the cage was instantaneously filled. It was beautiful until the very end. Dizzying, really.
Defeated, the canary sank to the floor, one beaten wing hanging out of the iron bars at a most unnatural angle. Its claws were opening and closing, grasping the tainted cave air, or, perhaps, trying to push it away. Delvos unclipped the cage and sat it on the floor in the space between us, lantern still held swaying above his head. The bird was aflame now, the silent red blood absorbing into the apologetic, yellow feathers. Orange, a living fire. I pulled out my camera as I sat on the ground beside the cage. I took a few shots, the camera’s clicks louder than the feeble chirps sounding out of the canary’s tattered, yellow beak. My head was spinning. Its coal-black eyes reflected the lantern’s flame above. I could see its tiny, red tongue in the bottom of its mouth.
Opening.
Closing.
Opening, wider, too wide, then,
Silence.


I felt dizzy. I remember feeling the darkness surround me; it felt warm.

“I vaguely remember Delvos helping me to my feet, but leaving the mine was a complete haze.” I told the panel back in D.C., “It wasn’t until we had crossed the stream on the way back to the cabin that I began to feel myself again. Even then, I felt like I was living a dream. When we got back to the cabin the sight of the lively yellow canaries in their coops made me cry. Delvos brought me a bottle of water and told me I needed to hit the trail because the sun set early in the winter, so I le

This is for the birds who take their time leaving cages
Who use all the strength in their brains to take them places
Who use all the strength in their beaks to cry out on their stages
And declare peace on the birds on the rescue mission to save them

This is for the birds who work alone
Who type alone on their computers
Give their life to social media users
But are still strangers to the ones who live at home

This is for the birds who shed a tear
When that anniversary comes around each year
Whether it be the last bottle you downed or the last blood stained floor you cleared
The last blood stained soul, in the mirror you feared
Even when all the birds around you ceased to cheer

This is for the birds whose nest was burned down to the ground
By the father who let a political party take him down
But still sits and waits quietly til the coast is clear
But still sits and waits in the fire while the rescue birds are here

And maybe does it burn
But maybe that’s how birds learn
By waiting for the coast to be clear
By being taught when to burn
And it pains me to say but
It’s pain that saves us when the soft and cushy world fails to give us what we’ve earned
The exposition of the truth
The key to the freedom birds so often chase after

But this is for the birds who take their time leaving cages
Who use all the weakness in their hearts to imagine places
Who would rather stay in than be alive on a stage
It’s really clear

That maybe what you wanted was a little bit of control
Because the nest burned down and you thought
“What would happen if I go?”
But the time to find out is right now
Right here

i hate the birds
i hate the fish in the sea
i hate the birds
they have no right to be
i hate the birds
i hate the fish in the sea
i hate the birds
they're mocking me

i have no wings and i can't fly
i just sit and watch time go by
i hate the birds even though i try
to be happy
but alone i cry

i have a voice, but i cant sing
i just sit here
a silent thing
i hate the birds
although they bring,
a pretty song
to hate i cling

i hate the birds
i hate the fish in the sea
i hate the birds
they have no right to be
i hate the birds
i hate the the way they're free
i hate the birds
they're mocking me

I can hear the birds chirping loud on this morning.
I hear them chirp from tree tops, traffic stops, outlet shops, and until their lungs pop.
Their chirping is a sign.
It's a conveying message.
It capitalizes on the dualities of hope and inspiration.

These birds fly every single day.
They remind me of my mother.
She went day after day caring for us after my father left.
She never stopped, much like this bird I see above me.

These birds chirp to find other birds.
It reminds me of my friend Rick.
Rick was a struggling alcoholic who always pushed people away.
But one day, that changed like the tides.
Rick realized what his life was amounting to, and changed.
He saw life for better, and he reached a helping hand out to anyone who needed it.
He'd give you the shirt off his back even if you had 20 to spare.
I remember the first day I met Rick, he offered to pay for my movie ticket.
Man, how fast two years has gone by without you here.

These birds I watch from my window, they never look sad.
I wish I could put on that facade.
I wonder how truly happy one must be if they're happy all the time.
I know some people who are happy all the time.
Or atleast they act that way.
I just feel like they are drowning, but they don't want to bother people by saying, "save me."
Birds can fly away, so people would think they wouldn't need saved.
But what happens when a bird flies out too far over the ocean?
Who can hear its cries then?

These birds, they're pretty cool.
And I'm probably not pretty cool for calling birds pretty cool.
But when it comes down to it, birds are warriors.
They can see what other's can't view, fly where other's can't reach, and sing unlike any other creature.

Many people go through life trying to be a strong valiant warrior.

And birds can do it on a Thursday morning without even breaking a sweat.