A Woman King, A Crydian

we live in a world where men are not allowed to cry,
or women to be kings.

i don’t like this world,
i’m a man,
and i’m crying now.

i cry every day.
it seems to be the only thing i’m consistently good at,
the only thing that comes easily to me.

people say i’m too sad,
i say they are too happy.

400 million animals will be murdered today,
after suffering for years in chains, isolation cages,
stuffed into packed rooms, eating each others’ flesh,
diseased, poisoned, abused.

2 billion people will barely eat today,
bleed and bow for that dollar they squeeze from each turn of the earth,
2 billion don’t have it much better,
maybe 25000 or so children under 5 will die in the next 24 hours for no reason,
while 1000 women will be sexually assaulted in just one country,
mine.

we pay people to make us laugh and call them comedians,
because we want to forget,
maybe we should pay people to make us cry,
call them crydians,
so that we can remember.

i’m a crydian,
i cry when i see a dead bee,
a singed meteor falling through the sky,
a memory of my violence,
her whimpering,
the times i shouted at the women in my life,
and forbid them from shouting at me.