Birds Are Not My Epic Poem by Chester Maynes

When I’ll write an epic for the animals
Particularly birds with their wings and beaks and claws
They’ll make me sick to think of them in the bathroom
When all the intense images I’ll see are them flying
Over and above my head out from the shower faucet
Those weird throbbing like needles on my skins
Are brandishing my mortality to hate the images
I admit of them my number one phobia
I cannot run a writing race overnight with such of them as characters
They can be epic but they cannot be mine
Say if my rationality is purely an excuse
But I am this mortal who does fear
Birds are birds and I cannot undress them
Who has dreads and who has courage?
Birds are not my epic