This is not what a normal person waiting to start his Masters’ does;
this is not the kind of person we believed to make a fuss
over the way life works, so early in the rush
of his own existence as someone still trying to avoid the crush
of existential dread that we engendered.
Crush the leaves and spill the tea
all over his brown, shaking, trembling body;
this is not how we wanted psychology
to be. This is not how we imagined the dream
to go.
The boy was supposed to explode.
Where is his reaction? He still has his diodes
attached the wrong way to his biome; everything growing out of
his home is alive, and writhing, and singing
in colours we haven’t even begun to restrict and streamline.
Tell me how I am supposed to be comfortable with someone of his particular kind
of nonsensical bravery, atavistic tomfoolery,
deOrientalising rationality; now how are we supposed to revive
the system that kept us going for 75,010 years of unearthly, unholy life;
maybe Evans-Pritchard was actually right
when he said that we had to expect more from the magic of the natives,
and not just imagine them as devoid of anything that, relative
to us, might ever look civilised.
Might ever look superlative.
Or maybe not.
Maybe we should just be punitive.
Maybe we assume that all things are relative,
when they are actually just universally able to be pointed to us
as the pinnacle and truth and indefatigable summit
of who we are, rationally divine, psychoemotionally unlimited.
I want the Merlionsman to go back to being primitive.