Last Contact [News Poem March 30, 2010]
“But over the last 20 years, private companies and academic researchers have claimed patents on more than 4,300 human genes — about 20 percent of all genes in the human body.”
--Jim Dwyer, The New York Times, March 30, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/nyregion/31about.html
The animals of planet three
Were brutes, and yet an entity
Comprised of them, but more like us—
A being with whom we could discuss
The means of trade with primitives—
Emerged from parts that squirm and live.
The natives called them government;
Or business—what they really meant
To say was sentience exists
In groups for them—the rest resist
But lack the power, so they find
Themselves all trapped in hidden binds.
We bargained for the darker ones
To work in mines near far off suns;
And ate the meat of lighter skins:
Delicious! It was clean and thin.
Our chefs prepared them as fillets.
We took their genes and flew away.
Those entities are better off
Without their poor at feeding troughs.
Besides, they treat their beasts the same:
And never had a moral claim—
For dignity's for higher life
And unused parts are tasty. Rife.
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