“Lizard Brain”

A clear objective—survival       
Tuck head down and traipse through desert sands—       

            An Arrakis boiling with religious certitudes,     

                      ancient political nuances   

Multitudinous paths leading to destruction       
Ignore the razor winds that slice through reason   
And only hone instinct   

Survive   
Clutch the knife of insanity in your righteous fist   
Rip into the enemy’s flesh   
Retaliate—an eye for an eye—until all are blind   
Blades become bombs   
Homes reduce to rubble housing mutilated families   

Logic stumbles through the wreckage   
And gets lost in the stench of decay   
Becomes overburdened and overrun by molecular rage—   

            (Passed down from evangelist to fanatic     

                       to zealot to extremist)   

Until it dries up and dies   

 

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman