Thy neighbor: a biblical statement on community

the feeling you get alone beneath a streetlight

when it starts to drizzle rain late at night

and your hands are full and pockets fat

with information on where you live

who you know and love, your phone

and license, your keys, your confidence

that no one is following you;

no one has any reason to want to know anything about you


Yet you feel eyes on you in the open

when you believe you have privacy

your dome is the underside of an eye

placed within the socket, with many hive-scattered eyes

set in hexagonal walls staring down

unblinking, therefore all seeing

tracking your every move with the reverence of royal airs

why do you despise the comforts of the throne?


Your subjects, faceless, nameless

inconvenient, observant, who are they really?

Thy neighbor, just as private, quiet, secret, they are not it!

Yet you feel eyes, for this is the animal

wild, who surrenders by stepping into the trap

finally, relief in the jaws of civilization when they embrace man

and their teeth too weak to do the job, employ metal ones to snap


No more do we run the trails of our forest home

no more do the woods and wilderness we roam,

no longer belly up in the sun do we roll, nor happily do we lay

only when we are outmatched, and must pray to be spared as prey

no more do we kick up dirt or chase scents on the wind

now we shiver in our dark crate, embrace the trap we set within

this is what puts a sick dog down and domesticates a wild man.