Little bit of salt in the wound
I inherited it from a passerby
6 degrees of separation
Won’t save a festering wound.
Won’t alleviate the sting
Or the burn.
There is pain enough for you.
There is pain enough for me.
There is pain to spare.
Never a shortage, never for us.
Little bit of soap in the wound
To clean out the foreign bodies.
The burn is guaranteed,
But the wound is in a spot
An angle, a pull of the skin
Where relief is unlikely.
This week’s theme/starter is the word “hierarchy.”
Rules for existence begin and end with knowing what to eat and what eats you.
No man is a king of
this jungle.
We may have the crown
and the scepter,
even a self-fashioned throne.
All of it
poor substitution
for teeth,
claws, and
speed.
Our prey, too,
must remove its finery,
depart from a regal state.
Send away its royal court.
Our weapons and our intellect
Our substitution for teeth, claws, and speed,
a far more effective method
at this scale.
Eat and be eaten.
Muscle to ash to soil
to what is eaten for strengthening
what has outlived our own usefulness.
