Fight or Flight

My image for this poem is essentially two ants approaching eachother and jousting their antennae the way they do. They both are on the same path. I also had in mind that familiar image of the evolution of homo sapiens, the one where he starts off as a crawling ape and ends upright, a man. Someone should make a new version of that, with man destroying self. Er, oops... Still, it doesn't seem the best idea in the world for humankind to keep procreating just because that is our instinct. As Hicks said, Evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs - We are supposed to evolve ideas.


Evolution Does Not Equal Progress

Two life forms head toward one another,
their paths separate but aligned by instinct
the search for food, the automated DNA
homing in on water, survival; very little protocol.

Very little room for creativity or spin doctoring,
yet there is a fault in the genetic code because
not all paths are linear and not all quests progressive;
impetus for nutrition is not as impetuous as other instincts.

Other instincts explode when the two life forms meet,
when, antennae interlocking, they sense each other:
Each - Other - Instinct is now aligned, original path forgotten,
for now at least, as, jousting curiously, a semblance emerges.

A semblance of semi formalised social code, after all
not as automated as first thought, not as laid down.
Not quite as etched as at first, more - "wiggle room"
and wiggling there surely is, sparring, almost violent.

Almost violent but not quite, frisky would be the word;
now the only impetus is caprice, the only winner whimsy
but wait because as ever, as ever, the mother plan,
the masterboard, the code maker mocks the code breaker.

The code breakers rebel, children in the garden of freedom,
seemingly cast adrift from Nature's rod, about to be reeled in;
two paths, one casting director, unseen puppeteer, flesh
coloured, air coloured, broad strokes and sharp prods.

Sharp prods with hormone-injecting rod, electric shocks,
engendering the kind of change only suns and gods brandish
antenna to paw, paw to opposable attitude, social code indeed
fanning out of paw, as a pup kneads the mother's breast

As the paths diverge, blood vessels on dermis, roads on a map.
As child needs mother, life forms need formation, edges to the mess
Means to the very end, end to the quest, meaning, reason;
sensing end-beginning, love-hate, danger-opportunity.