I've been under the influence
Of a grand delusion for years:
That humanity was in need of saving,
That I could do something to change things.
But the vast, sanguineous swamp of civilization
Swallows you whole,
Indiscriminately forcing you to adapt.
Ripping your flesh from the bone,
Until you are a twisted phantom
Of who you once were.
The ants,
Though,
They work together.
Their colonies are, essentially,
A single organism:
An immune system of warriors with grotesque chelicerae,
With foragers and scavengers radiating from the colony's center,
Bringing back sustenance,
And the queen, ceaselessly pumping out generations.
They all live and work and die seamlessly:
Cogs upon cogs, organic machinery.
So what am I?
A blockage in an artery?
An aimless foreign object,
Doomed to be consumed by everything around me?
I don't know.
I wake up and I put my contacts in.
It's usually past noon,
And some days I can't get out of bed.
Don't ask me why.
But I go to class and I take care of things
I'm trying to at least be mobile,
To have options and use them.
I've got a wanderer's spirit
And a saint's moral code.
Why must so many go without? I ask.
Why do we cause so many of our own problems?
Again, I don't know.
We're naïve, hairless apes with nuclear weapons,
Cosmological Protozoa at best.
Our cities are staunchly divided:
The haves and have nots,
The grime and the detergent.
The ghetto is potholes, shattered glass, And faded, forgotten dreams.
This is not the succinct society I see in ants;
This is chaos, disorder, malignant and cancerous.
This is ecological genocide.
This is systematic exploitation and manipulation.
This is rigged elections and clandestine empires.
This is **** Sapiens circa 21st century,
And I want nothing of it.