21/30

4/21/13

They gave me life,
a test tube bastard,
an engineered seed.
My leaves grew over
these golden ears like
green lullabies.
I could almost pretend
I was real, could almost
believe I had purpose.

Even in the threshing
I was gratified
My kernels bursting
with sugar, starched
in my Sunday best,
how proud and tall I stood.
How innocent the concept,
how naive my roots:
nourish the world
they told me,
you were built for this.

The journey to plate was
dark. Jostling. Uneventful
but for the design imprinted
on the very proteins of my
chromosomes...
I felt an anticipation there,
a longing.  How wonderful
to be needed, how incredible
to be named salvation.
My brothers and I heroic
kernels in this calvary -
riding forth in boxes and
trains and 18 wheelers we
were angelic deliverers
warriors against hunger;
husked paladins and silken
saints.

When I arrived tumbling
into the dust from the bin; peace left.
there was expectation
creasing those faces.
Dependance showed through
paper skin like bones -
Distended bellies screaming
a tortured chorus.

I realized too late,
as my masticated flesh
became bolus, as peristalsis
and churning broke me down
to my base elements, enzymes
refusing to hold me, villi warring
with glucose - I was not taken up
I am charlatan sustenance
I am not real.

I am frankenstein's monsanto.
I am an empty promise
I am the lining in a fat man's pocket.
I am technology, the future,
I am a vengeful God with a deflated heart,
I am soulless fodder for an abandoned world.
My brothers desecrate hallowed fields
insurmountably.

You made me this.
I am in your image.
My reach surpasses that which I grasp,
I am empty handed,
A cob pipe, smoldering.