Hunger's Accountant is the Serpent of Circles [Today's News Poem, June 28, 2010]
We own a placenta when cast from our mothers;
And handfuls of ashes—as remnants of lifetimes
We spent in a torpor. Our atoms were never
Possessions. And matter? Inert to the holy;
Eternally lying—not dead and not sleeping,
Nor live. And the deists prefer it alone with
Their worship of solids and logics and sorrow.
They harbor suspicions there's nothing but pleasure;
That moments between the whole universe clapping,
Are chemical wonders that vanish too quickly.
The urine of tigers, the flag of a nation—
They're hunger's accountants and dread what is coming:
The feast for the maggots; those landlords of graveyards,
Who rule in their turn at the end of beginnings.
And hope for no reason is fanciful folly;
And appetites thrive on this plane of existence
(The only one suited for acids and hormones):
What God owns is nothing much more than a stomach
That feeds on itself like the serpent of circles.
And likewise I feed off the hope I'm abandoned—
That angels have snipped the umbilical tubing
And cast me to mud with the rest of the carbon.
“... the Justice Department on Monday announced charges against 11 people accused of living for years in the United States as part of a deep-cover program run by S.V.R. ... secret Russian agents assigned to live as married couples in the United States, even having children to further their cover.”
– Charlie Savage, The New York Times, June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/world/europe/29spy.html
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