The birds did not attack Bodega Bay
They disappeared and so
These torpid sentences should be easier
Without all that cawing and chirping
Without Herrmann’s unmusical score
Seven years after Forbidden Planet
You can hear this year’s cicadas though
Not the 17-year variety
These sound a higher pitch
And rev gradually like a locomotive played at 78
A plastic motor winding up
And they make dirty dirty insinuations
About the acts you have performed in the past
About peril naked or fully clothed
That haunts about the uneven eddies of time
So it’s all just technical innit
All our irony and imagery and verbal panache
Imitation of the great masters
Unless it’s innate like the cicada’s oppressive chirr
Without pleasure without consent
To swink and to swive
To dwell underground for 17 years
Or even just one
To come out and cry
And remember the silent birds