P.E.T. Scan of The World

The following is a poem by my adored friend Mary MacMillan who is a super talented person, an artist and a poet.  It really hits the nail…

PET Scan of the World

The massive machine dwarfs the orb

stilled by the pill to relax, rolled onto

the sheet-swathed slab.

The buzz, hum begins as the bruised

sphere yields to pixilation, and hot spots

scream on the imaging screen.

I see the open wounds wrought by Palestine,

Israel, the cremated remains

of the plane shot down

in Ukraine as Russia encroaches, a blood-stained

grab, while Sunnis, Shiites, radical sects

tear at the febrile, ill-built Iraq, tribes

torture Afghanistan, babies

bleed out in hunger-scorched Africa,

pure white bears cling to frail bergs

as the ocean opens its plastic-choked maws

to inhale the pristine shores, dunes,

and dirt-germed, thirsty children

trudge through our borderless lines

of demarcation to protestations of who

belongs in this once sacred

nation, and the prisons are engorged

with men of color, and guns blast

through the hearts of innocence.

I study the magnetic, scattered splotches,

hear only the words; chaos, metastatic,

see the scabby, oozing globe emerge,

wobble onto its scarred axis, hobble

through the hall, trip, fall,

gasp for breath.

Macro wasting into micro.

Just like us.

Terminal.