How can we have a common language
when every person is a different species?
Though truth trumps style at times
and companionship can soften many vices
we still stand out like snakes on Shiva's arms
(though we act like it's our jewelry sets us apart).
Oh what a clever masquerade:
that we're homogenized like milk
on a factory floor of clones and typecast tools
to be expunged of passion and of hair
just waiting for the hive to take our souls,
pretending meanwhile we can't see
the red hair, green eyes, missing limbs, crooked teeth
(forget about what's in there underneath!)
"Agreement or the void," it said
in picture books with diagrams and smiles
to earn us eagle badges let us get inside the buildings.
Still we slip the bounds of form in every moment,
conversing like chameleons, how deep we go to understand
the mirror of a million faces.
