From Within the Beast

This is it, the courthouse square. It's empty, but for
Blowing trash. The times have changed, fulfillment
Of a fear I had when growing up: as separate cells
Converge to become organisms, each surrenders
Agency, becomes a doer of one thing, directed from
Without.

It's evening, and all those cars are carrying the cells
From where they do as they're instructed to the
Places where they rest. They spend their nights
Inside their homes. They do not talk to others.
What they do is eat the food that comes in
Packages that they've received, and watch their
Televisions, getting guidance from without,

And, in a distant place, if we had means to go to it,
We'd find the brain, itself a mass of straitened cells,
Which do not, cannot, lead the body, but as it's
Been led, and, thus, the creature stumbles stupidly
Across the ground, a dinosaur defeated by the
Climate. Times have changed.

From a bench inside the square, I sit and watch.
I haven't found the one thing I'm supposed to do,
And that makes me a cancer. I'm a threat to all
The other cells, so, as they make their ways back
To their homes, I see, along this place's edges,
Antibodies coming for me, armed and dressed
In blue.



Poetry by Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 56 times
Written on 2010-01-25 at 11:37

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