Vainglory

This is no country for new souls

and even children know when schoolyard bullies

become dictators, who become

elected officials.

Our nerves miss when Einsteinian curiosity

was not the formula to make whole persons

into fractions,

communities disintegrate, and ancestral war games

nullify under the pressure of new chess strategies.

Did the gods conspire with Darwinian madness?

Only those who are unsubtle and brutal will see

tomorrow.

Science frightens me

and war is prayer before an altar.

These men in motion are caged and fanged;

God is the Zookeeper.

Everyone wants to sink their tiger teeth

into each other.

They are molten machine guns with their barrels

still spinning.