The Body Politic

I am new blood

from an old wound,

scab picked free by nub-nails
bitten anxious.

The flesh swells

but the hole cannot close,
wiped and worried by
loose wires in a nervous System.

A heart pumps

and the crowd surges forward,
spilling over itself
in a mad dash for purpose,

And dumb fingers

dig old graves,
bone straining to reach bone,
all but thwarted by maggot-earth.

The brood swarms

to fill the hole,
shovel and coffin both
seething with agitated life.

I feed the maggots.
I fuel the bone Machine,
pushed by passion made
pressure in confinement.

Within, I shouted escape!

Drying alone now,
spread thin on the battered without.