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Sweetness
by Mark Vogel In this stark bright frightening room the nurse is professional checking vital signs, while I am statue in squeezed silence helping a thin needle pierce the vein to draw forth evidence of past sins. You are nervous, she announces, watching pricked blood ooze in a drop carrying sugar too rich to be quiet. Who knew in the donut shop wild excess the sweet would so control? Who dreamed as a child subtle chemistry, extracted, could be mapped, the bile analyzed, the trail of stored poisons followed? In the green commons tradition still lingers, mixing with run-off in gutters, and children with fly away hair believe the rich red intelligence binds the living machine’s individual mysterious story. Even though today digitized doctors can read from afar the ravenous racing pulse, gauging to what degree the addicted mad engineer begs for a fix. So why wait for the problem when every action touches a responsive river? Despite story and science, how little has been understood for so long, forever even in blinking clarity—nothing focused on at all. Only that defiant clouds drift to the north and east. I rise knowing sooner than expected someone will again check liquids like dark fermenting wine. Only puppies and the very young don’t know that once stoked, the appetite rarely dulls. |
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