"This psychosis has the most," offered the shopkeeper of the mind.
Although tradition tells me it is Hell that bedevils me,
is there not a yet larger pattern encompassing
the men threading punchcards through my head?
It was not Charles Babbage who said, "We are parasites
on your brain," but a well-meaning onlooker
tasked first with killing me, then with piecing
me back together again. I merely suggested
Lemonade from lemons -- symbiosis from parasitism --
what orchids adorn my trunk? White and red, a unique
array of spots on each frill-bearded face
bereft of repetitive slogans, awed into silence
By the greater beauty around them. Bacterium
in the gut of a creaking old man -- the colony began
when Edison first flickered into incandescence.
Who knew his birthday was the same as Saddam Hussein's?
A normally restrained warrior, assigned
to the thankless detail of monitoring me
broke into song, like a friend -- I, whom Satan
spit back up again and again and again.
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