Patterns of Panic (poem)

[Underground_Network]

Patterns of Panic

The ground shakes as if God is swinging
His fists so fervently that just the motion
Itself is displacing the tectonic plates
Beneath Earth’s surface, causing inner turmoil
And thus self-inflicted tremors
That drive the world that much closer
To insanity.

“Is this an earthquake?” shouts the boy to his father,
His father just nods his head diagonally
As if to say “No, the world is over, go to sleep,”
But the boy stares off into the dark gray clouds
And sways to the movement of the earth
As if Mother Nature is coursing through his veins,
As if Mother Nature is half of his genome
But for an ephemeral state Mother Nature
Has overtaken every function within the boy’s body,
From his attempts at perambulation
To the way his mind reverberates
All which he envisions and takes in.

A mirage on the distant horizon
Causes the father to believe salvation
Has arrived, but it is just a swarm of locusts
Driven from their home, not come
To swallow the crops of opportunity,
But come to wreak havoc upon
The already havocked world
Of one boy and his father.

The boy bows down to the incumbent locusts
While the father swats, to no avail, at each individual insect.
In doing so the aggravated swarm surrounds the father
And swallows his entity whole, covering his body
In a swirl of brown and gray high-pitched noises
That pierce the ears of not only the now
Fallen son of Mother Nature
But also the deaf cow
That has already perished at the fists
Of God.