Among the Grave

somewhere in the bowels of the NIH there are tiny, fragile pig-children

Spun from the DNA of “us” and “them”

Which reminds me of a story

Once there were these two guys

Who let iterations and outlines of darkness

Into every corner of their very own souls

(Whatever that is, right?)

Only to find their place among the dead

Until…

Love walked in

Dispelled the ghosts of men into the

Real and understandably alarmed 

Sea of pigs

Who then chose death over the dark wraiths of men

Sometimes I ask myself

What happened to those panicked pigs?

Did they find the eternal?

And what about these new unconsenting

children of a lonely room

Half-pig, half-child 

Will they be allowed to

Escape the grave

And, with no help from their human side

Find rest for their weary souls

The Primitive Streak

What are you doing up so late, little one? 

Awake among the Petri dishes 

No place for children

Where is your mother? Your father?

Do you mean to tell me

These nice-looking men in lab coats

Are the only parents you know 

As your filigree DNA unfolds they peer

Into this sterile womb

Strain to catch a glimpse of 

Your nascent primitive streak

Unwilling to admit it is theirs 

We all fear

To the bone

somewhere floating in the ether of souls there is

another us

Without the inevitable entrapment of self-preservation

-The pig mom and the human child

I use my truncated vocal apparatus 

 to try to warn you you are

– not safe here

among the scientists

With their crisp white coats and syllogistic rejoinders

They count pieces of us

Placing animal in one

category 

and the human in another

Bone-bone-bone-

Spleen-heart-cornea-

Never question whether we can

see color or 

Feel pain 

Confined instead to

Diminished souls jarred by

All the words for

monster

Chimera Gastrulation

Words matter, mainly because they stand for something meaningful.  For instance, if you call genocide “the great solution,” or “living space” it is still really just genocide, but the strange, deforming euphemisms you have thrown up in front of the horror of murder might confuse the dim or comfort the monstrous.

So, for instance, if you call an unholy mixing of embryo parts from two species, one human, one not, a chimera and you call the embryo parts gastrulation, and you leave out any issue of obtaining consent from the very small and then you leave out the part about keeping these living entity for endless experimentation then destroying them.

Even then it sounds unbearable.

Some things we should not do not just because they are monstrous and destructive.  Some things we should not do because they make us monsters of destruction.