We teach themn tricks;
ask them to perform in what
may seem to them to be
unnatural ways; they are creatures
of instinct and its creators,
and have, yet, no truck with toadying.
yet we teach them to please us;
teach them to act unlike themselves,
and to submit to our will
impulses of their own
to bloody creativity.
When they do, we are most pleased,
and always disappointed, for they
are never the mirrors we wished for;
neither again can they be
what they were;
fierce in tooth
and sharp of claw.

Then we mock them,
when they do wrong, and say,
"You are not a proper thing
at all; not one
nor the other,"
and think they are to blame
for the tricks
we taught them
when they were cute.

And when they grow
desperate, and insist
on doing the tricks we taught them
despite our stern prohibition,
we are angry, and
call them crazed,
and lock them into hospitals
whose entranceway signs
once included the word
mad.
"No sane adult would do that!"

But we did,
didn't we?
We teach them tricks
of madness.

©  Copyright, 2000; Malcolm Beckett