It’s not bad. A little stuffy perhaps.
But I’m on my own, and I wonder
if I don’t prefer it this way?
There’s regular seed regularly changed
shredded newspapers beneath me
changed as well. Old news seems fitting.

The singing seems unnatural, but I’m driven to it.
I don’t think there’s a real reason.
Perhaps it’s biological.
Or, just a quirk of character
neither necessary nor worthwhile.

No one takes the cover off the cage.
Aren’t they curious? The cage is singing?
There is of course the potential reason
the song is not appreciated.
I’ve lain an egg. For want of a rooster.
Which is curious, because I am a rooster.

Perhaps it’s a shroud they’ve thrown over me,
my race is run and I’m to wait for death.
But I don’t like waiting and I feel like singing.
What a wicked world I live in. It presses
around me, suffocating, sequestering me.
Isn’t that strange? That I wish to sing?

Think of my song thus, this reason I sing,
it’s more than a wish, less than a whisper.