The archetypical tale that society has scrawled
upon these sheets is over-inked and unintelligible,
civilization’s signature a tattooed mess of spattered ink,
its beginnings, perhaps, the more appropriate
when Darwinian precepts were full swing,
when decisions as to which species
had purview upon the planet’s resources
were daily reiteration of a plan.
But the pendulum’s gone functionally askew;
its aboriginal purpose immorally forgot,
the mutation from sobriety’s detente to the sword of Damocles,
a dark, despotic, labyrinth of apoptosis and despair.
And under this we have “progressed”:
chopping off the heads of relatives
and our so-called friendly competitors.