Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/5/2019

Sitting on the perch the rooster boasted:
soon the king of swimmers I'll be
and laurel wreath I will get:
Cos the champion of champions I am in this respect!
The hens, excited, clucked in admiration,
small yellow chicks silently listened in awe,
oinking happily were the piglets,
and the ducks? Like crazy they laughed!

Wieslaw Musialowski 10/15/2001

run
run
run away
for you are just another pray
run
run
run away
lives are lost and found all day
run
run
runaway
for the animals come out to play

Displeased with exhausted mind
Though ugliness embodies perfection
Of the creation majesty empower
The whites aren't right
And black ain't beautiful
Questioning the creativity
And erroneous concept of beauty
We somewhere fades our own reality
Indulge with your voice inside
Whose raising the vocals of equality
Whose antonishing signs
Are reflection of humanity
Now the quest of questions
Is out of answers inherently
Yet hopes are serene enough
To resist a human world
And here the wrong things
Are done with good intentions.

Market rest under the night sky
As a monkey runs along the roofs of the town,
He hops on the cloth that shades the produce when the sun beats down,
And bounces up and all around
Until the sun comes back again,
And the market exudes life as it should.

i think of those lab rats
living their lives
blissfully in cages
hand-fed fruit-loops
and poison

they’re happy
says the veterinarian
scribbling notes on a clipboard
while the rats drink sugar
water and run on wheels

fate is not kind to lab rats
their years are already so short
a drop in the bucket compared
to the well of time humans draw
from greedily

death is a shadow for humanity;
it is the thought gnawing on the bars
of our mind, the ghost of an animal
running endlessly on a wheel
that we placate with toys and treats

we call it housing enrichment
because even lab rats have a home
because we choose to personify everything
even the things we ****:
carbon monoxide, bloodletting, a severing of nerves

and when they breathe their last breath
we write in our journals that the animals were
sacrificed, not killed, not murdered
dying for a cause bigger than them
for science, for knowledge, for gods on sterile altars

Penguins painted pink,
peacefully practising pragmatic pebble placement.
Perfectly pointy piles, please!

Profoundly pious Pandas ponder pancreatic problems,
predict potential palsy.
Prognosis? Perilously poor.

Pale porpoises proudly plunge purple pools,
placidly pasturing petrified plankton.
Poor protozoans perish.

Portly, paunchy, plumpish, porcine, porky pigs
populate putrid puddles,
Pulverizing pumpkin pies.

Purposely Prickly porcupines pursue palatable plants,
pin-pointing precisely.
Puce petunias preferred.

Pill popping puppet people perpetuate planetary perdition,
pardon profuse pollution.
Pretentious ******.

As I inspected the witch's cottage,
my gaze fell upon a curious looking
jar on a shelf.
It was full of eyes.

The witch noticed, or sensed,
my discomfort
and simply said,
"The eyes contain the soul."

For the rest of the day,
I sat on the creaking floor
and examined each eye.
They appeared to be glass,
but I knew that was likely a rouse.

So, with kitchen cleaning gloves
I fished the next eye out of
the Mason jar and lifted it up to my own.

It was about as large as the others,
but molten honey colored,
and the iris took up so much space,
while the pupil was very small.
I turned to the witch, the eye still in hand.

"What kind of eye is this?" I asked,
showing the eye to her.
She pried it out of my grasp and felt
all over it, her eyes closed.

"It belonged to an elephant." she said,
handing it back to me.
Upon seeing the look on my face, she clarified,
"It died of natural causes, and I never ask for them.
They find their way to me."

I considered this.
"What other kind of eyes do you have?"
The witch smiled, and led me into another room,
full of jars on shelves.
This time they were organized, labeled with
the name of the creature.

Mouth open in awe,
I looked around the room in wonder.
The eyes ranged from human,
to elephant, to squid.
There were so many different sizes
and colors.
The labels told me the creature,
and some of them I had never heard of.

"Do they really hold the soul?"
The witch nodded.

"Each of these eyes belonged to a different living being,
who is now gone.
Their eyes, or souls, rather
find their way to me.
I keep them safe until the soul is ready
to be used in a vessel again."

I frowned.
"So, one day, all these will be gone?"
She nodded again.

"And a new set will take its place."
The witch patted the top of my head
with her weathered hand.
"Someday, you'll be the one to watch over
the souls.
It'll be up to you
to keep them away from harm."

Carefully, I put the elephant's eye
in the jar and ******* the lid closed.

Now I wait for my turn
to keep the souls safe.