The mockingbird is a long-tailed territorial bird with the affinity for mimicry. With the sounds of amphibians, insects, musical instruments, mammals, mechanical noises, and of course, birds, he yells on quacks, honks, squawks, songs, horns, drips, mowers, and sirens. 

Identifiable on my own terms. Call me duck as I bellow below my belly. Wren, as I drill holes in the nesting tree of time and space. Peace, as I whisper hums into the ears of your loved ones. Drake, as I squawk my disappointments into the late night. Rise to my toots of seemingly high effort. No, call me ambiguous. Call me professor and pupil. Grasp and release. Pioneer and disciple. Call me mockingbird, fitted for embodiment. Except do not assume you know me. Envoy and audience, in all, I am independently such. In all, I am independently myself; in all, I am wholly each. I am the singular and the collective. 

Little frame, mighty voice; the trachea of all I'd trust fallen to a larynx of deceit, its chords personifying the community surrounding their vibration. Little games for the talented, big tricks for the ignorant. Don’t shoot, I am but a Loggerhead Shrike crying for kin. In my search, I’ve stumbled upon the Swiss Army knife that cut slit my nape, pecked at and slid down and through my pipes. They blamed the long, loud black; who can tell it was the silver serenader?

Anything to say in defense, Mx. Unbridled Parrot? No cage to return to nor familiarity to fetch. Pick a favorite and stick. Up the ass of a loon, I'm sure you’ll fit right in.  

When conformity presses itself upon the living souls of empty vessels, the mockingbird imitates for reasons beyond mere fellowship and likeness. In fact, conformity has nothing to do with it, its survival, nature, hobby, its identity is mimicry. But when one’s identity becomes the very ability to copy and pretend where does the self hide? We learn from the mockingbird what cannot be taught by the compliance required by the patriarchal, capitalistic society. From the mockingbird comes understanding of its own capabilities, comes using talent consistently from the inconsistent noises surrounding the greater diaspora. In accordance with all America wants to be: thin, poor, healthy, loved, rich, popular, productive, hardworking. In my attempt to be, to change, and smush, and conform, I must understand my truest duty. I am not the mockingbird perched, ready to hear only what you want me to hear so as to regurgitate later for my own amusement and safety. Where is the safety in verbatim besides eventual routine? Where is the amusement in similarity when my self yearns for The Disparate? Where does the mockingbird stay when she can no longer take the cries of her unknown competitors? Who knows the true language of the bird? Does she? Has he heard her mother's true voice? A body in egg with deft ears eager for sense, oblivious to an arsenal of sham. I do not know my mother's voice, for she carries the expression of all living things. Am I too not the things she imitates? A pawn for hobby? A fool for fake? I strip her bare of the molt used to warm the beasts of naïveté. No, I am not her indeed, yet a wolf in sheep's clothing.  

Baaaa.