April 15th - The Infected

The virus is insidious
like a hollow smile tainted by a twitching eye
that defeats the politeness and warns
that soon after, your ears will be burning because
someone will be talking about you.
It is indiscriminate
like cancer, meteors, sleep,
and income taxes, and it has
the equivalent lethality of all three
combined and glued together with
the breath of the reaper.
It multiplies and takes over,
a nematode in an ant, clinging
to a blade of grass, or a mist,
clutching the ground,
surrounding it,
and absorbing all the headlights
that drive unwittingly in.
This virus takes the reins
in our simple, broken brains
and makes us pass it on like it's
a biological imperative.
It's incurable. It's infectious.
Each person experiences their own
personal brand of symptoms, and though
some are common amongst the infected,
most all are unique in some manner;
the virus always kills its victims,
and everyone becomes a victim sometime,
but it likes to change its game
and find new and interesting ways
to lay waste to the living.
This disease was given to me by my
mother and my father at the moment
of conception, when 23 and 23
made 46, and that jelly in her belly
became a solidifying form
that shivered into heartbeats
and grew its little fingers
and grew its little toes.