Jonah's Complaint

I liked it better in the warm darkness
In the belly of the beast.
The living whale was my Mother,
And I was a traveler
Swallowed by the ocean.

Something happened on my way
From my home the star
To my destination earth.

I never wanted to leave the cloud
In the first place.
My friends pushed me
And my mother begged me
To jump
To join the living,
To fall to earth.

But look where it got me --
An extra-terrestrial
Captured by gravity,
Looking foolish in my filmy blue tunic,
And ridiculed for my prophecies.

When I finally made it to Ninevah,
I found the city filled with friends
Who were all mixed up
Between left and right.
I made my pronouncements
And, dammit, they listened.

Now having conducted my one-woman show,
Screaming like a psychotic,
Soothed only by cigarettes and coffee,
I am a space creature
Anchored by earth.
And the worst of it is,
I love her.

When may I rest?
All I want to do
Is to sit in the shade
Of the beautiful weed.
Tobacco is the staff of life,
Of the universe, home and friends.

But these cigarettes are killing me,
And the city is burning.

- Sally Clay
April 4, 1992, Hawthorne, NY
(Oh Shinnáh Workshop)

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