Oh Mosquito

Why do we hate being animals?
Why do we loathe being beasts?
What sick, twisted thing has culture done
To hoist us above ourselves?

It's true we're not bodies but language
About bodies, dissembling
And thieving as it works through our brains,
But words only live in flesh,

Confused and confounded by themselves,
Leaving behind petroglyphs,
Standing stones, museums, libraries,
And more lost, stumbling bodies,

Unable to understand desire.
Dreams become technologies
About technologies, the caverns
Containing charcoal paintings

Of long-gone, hungry, humped-up creatures
Piled on top of each other,
Gifts of gone painters fascinating
The cameras of today.

Nothing's evil for being mortal,
Accidental memory.
The immortality of culture
Provides twilight for our lives.

My bones lean on the corpse of this tree.
A mosquito bothers near
Who wants to borrow blood as I waste
Time as a self, wondering.