Coco on the Prowl (Satis Shroff)
COCO ON THE PROWL (Satis Shroff)
Despite the canned canine food
Coco the cat is always hungry.
No, it’s not hunger.
It’s the predator’s instinct.
Coco is scared at home,
Always on the run.
But the night belongs to her.
She becomes a hunter.
Stealthily sneaking away
From the warmth of the living room,
She ventures out like her ancestors did.
Coco is a domestic cat,
But it’s impossible to drive out
This craving to hunt,
Like a sniper in Kiev or Donbas.
Whereas the sniper is trained to kill,
Coco has it from her parents.
Dimitri is a gardener from Donbas,
A man with separatist ambitions.
We talk about plants,
Life in the Donbas and Freiburg.
Dimitri likes Vodka and Russian songs.
Summer is approaching
And she hears the birds in the bushes and trees,
Chirping merrily and communicating animatedly.
Ah, to Coco they are her prospective preys to fall upon.
The air is still and Coco discerns
The Dreisam wind from the Vale of Hell.
She hears tweet-like sounds
Emitted from the nearby undergrowth.
Treads silently and freezes for a while.
There it is: the silhouette of a young bird.
And snaps it.
Coco’s teeth dig into the small neck of the bird,
Which lets out a short birdcry.
And it’s over.
Why do the Russians rape and kill?
What have Ukranian women done to them?
Killer instinct awakened in war?
Machos and chauvinists driven by power-hungry officers?
More medals and higher postings?
Coco can’t eat it feathers and all.
So it drops it on the road in front of the house.
Cars with people come by
And flatten the bird on the tarred road.
Till Mrs. Müller comes,
Shakes her head,
Looks around and dumps the feathered corpse
Into the bio-garbage bin.
A life is a bio-product,
And becomes fertilizer through soil recycling.
And the earthworms, centipedes, millipedes
That inhabit the subsoil.
The mutilated corpses of Bursa,
Tortured and shot.
Man becomes a monster,
Despite books, television and social media.
No ethics, morality, spirituality and orthodox litany.
He who has the bigger gun shoots
Even at unarmed women and children.
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