Simply Kafka: Pinky Swear Poem by Birgit Bunzel Linder

You are a hunger artist in a cage
of convention—
and I watch you starve.
A bug kicking its feet
in very thin air—
and I leave you upside down.

Ah, Great Wall of China!
It surrounds your heart
like a fortress made of paper-marché.
And I won't blow it down.
Pinky swear!

But you have already become
the emperor in his new clothes—
and I am not in your audience.

Perhaps someday you will ask
"Do you know why I never ate to a fill? "
And I will reply to you,
I will purse my lips and whisper,
"Because you were too afraid of the bill."