Tomas

Water breaks
The subject pours from
Open portals into
A rainbow wilderness
The cable to forever is severed
An artificial one is installed
Soon the subject is
Dropped into a cage
Where walls are painted
To resemble a barren beach
The playpen is reassembled into an F-16
He is served biohazards at mealtime
Heart rate sped up by sonar pulses
His form unadorned by a mother’s touch
Holograms of pentagrams are
Projected from satellites
To the back of his eye
A joystick is plugged into his spine
The flick of his own thumb
Wipes out his hard drive
Paralysis of the tongue
Deadening synapses
With fluorescent light of
Severed digital limbs and
Holes blown through lungs
Six hours daily
He is stuffed in a box
With dyslexic overseers to
Define his inferiority complex
In a complex designed
To farm bi-pedal cattle
His rattle replaced with
Cellular grenades
He is taught to be afraid of his name
Daily injections of fructose
Give him the shakes
He copes with crude jokes
Though the joke is on him
When they relocate his frame
To a colder cage
Where he serves as cheap labor
Pressing steel plates
Pulling triggers
Protecting his master’s estate
The concepts beyond him
Until it blows out his brains
On the front lines
Harvesting callow graves
Another corpse piles up
Like presidents in suit pockets
My man never complains
Because he has fast food shakes
And the latest kicks
He can get his kicks
Kicking virtual punks
On the new game console fix
Nobody consoles him
When the buzz wears off
The ring of lights dims
To reveal the landfill in the mirror
Tendinitis sets in on his
Wrists and shoulders from
Pushing uranium boulders
Up infinite concrete hills
No rest is given
No time to take in the landscape
No escape to a new angle
He is caught on an angler’s
Fish hook
Squirming
Baited by pictures of
Pretty girls and
Sleek cars
He flaps helplessly on the pier
Coughing and wheezing
Pondering how his misguided
Pursuit of a fly life
Left him legless
Headless
Aimless
Involuntarily waiting as
The tinder ignites for
The fire to fry him