Insulate to the sharp needle of insulin – as this pan
creases over daylight frying a canopy of trees, left
with skins that smell of mould; moulding us into forms
that don’t fit, following titles without ever playing the role.

Models parade as model citizens, while forests fall around
their footsteps; smiles reduced to emojis, connection flat
as a screen. Each impression feels like a coded message –
profiles lined with Bible verses in their bios, good at quoting
scripture, but so not good at keeping notes on The Message.

But we fashion ourselves into “the latest,” but our dreams
arrive too late, departing long before we catch them.

We are all stories inked together from the sharp tip of the
pen, injecting more time into our veins, yet living diabetic
to our morals – sugar-high on indulgence, starved of truth.

Let us remember Aristillus & Timocharis,
Like Halley & Galileo.
Of Zhang Heng & Dao Lee,
Like Newton & Max Born.
Of Werner & Yermolyeva,
Like Curie & Oppenheimer.
Of Paracelus & Fredrick Banting,
Like Tesla & Pythagoras.
Of Richard Feynman & André Ampère,
Like Michael Faraday & Benjamin Franklin.
Of Payne-Gaposchkin & Joseph Swan,
Like Ignacy Łukasiewicz & Kikunae Ikeda.
Of Takamine Jōkichi & Berners-Lee,
Like Robert Hooke & Gutenberg.
Of Talos Attalus & Perrilus,
Like William Bullock & Franz Reichelt.
Of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī & Ibn al-Haytham,
Like Archimedes & Johannes Kepler.
Of Aldini & Henry Russell,
Like Edison & Graham Bell.
Of Carl Bosch & Richard Fiedler,
Like Mr. Hyde & Dr. Jekyll.
Of Brokkr & Sindri,
Like Gullinbursti & Hephaestus.