By: Tyler Morello
Somewhere off in a foreign oasis shuffles a summit of suited men,
shaking hands and bowing, feigning courtesy,
a grayscale congregation.
Emissaries gather from far corners of the globe, crowding embassies:
glass houses that reverberate the threat
of throwing stones.
These agents represent the profligate, the immoral world’s string-pullers,
masters of the ministerial marionettes,
parroting their voices.
They always look the same – formal dress, pins, medals, and ribbons.
But they speak in translated tongues,
reliant on ciphers.
There is a symmetry to their motions, rhythmic manipulations:
countries match head to head, eye to eye.
Conflict in 4/4 time,
and yet a pressure, as each voice attempts to be the bomb squad knife
that cuts the right wire, averting crisis,
sparing the boots and bullets.
Theirs is an underhanded peace.
I do not belie a war within myself.
My anatomy signs armistice accords of its own in blood red ink,
on the X of dotted line arteries:
the self, a shared world.
In peacetime, the mind sends its ambassadors fruitlessly to the heart,
the self-proclaimed sovereign of the body, to be stopped at the doors.
The body is led by the leash of the heart, its impulsive executive,
to chase its interstellar out-of-body fancies;
other organs strung along.
The brain and its nerves, entities of cold electric rationale,
sending its signals in synaptic morse,
still responds too slowly.
Smaller allied nation-states still get their seats at the players’ table:
lungs to air grievance, muscles to support,
guts to garner energy.
Antibodies, the world’s couriers, relish diplomatic immunity,
while bones lobby for joint resolution;
together one whole vessel.
The self employs the same checks and balances
that legislature calls to order,
for a body at war with itself
never profits, never prospers