Put aside tangerine trees
and skies made of marmalade—
picture your grimacing
face circumscribed,
penned in, with a diagonal
line running through it—
and then try
not regarding anyone
or anything
you come across from now on
as either—
some bland and colorless
food to be consumed,
slid through a grate
in your camped
circadian cage—
or else
one of the miserable creatures
who greedily
consumes it:
hungry
but always eating,
groggy
but never dreaming,
doomed
but never self-aware enough to brood.
