Listen to Marvin read Agitation
Neurobiology, doubtless, maintains
Strange modalities manipulating
Brains—sound and sight and worry, produce strains,
Synapse sparks, ebbs and snarling flows freighting
Behavior with stark predilection.
Bacteria sickens; murderous rough
Blows evoke fear—reasonable, stunning—
The body dealing with the body’s stuff.
But how do some sweet words, or certain sights
Suffuse the skin with blush, while spiteful pride
Enflames a man, a mob, a clan to heights
Of insane deadly rage, to homicide,
To suicide, serving invented god?
Rage: hist’ry’s sculptor and malignant bawd.
II
Genesis, essentially strange, weird,
Includes, among its artifacts, triggers
That launch missiles of flaming rage—so seared
With hate, infused with such deadly vigor—
Crisping reason, civility’s broad base,
To gray ash. OK, this we understand.
But here’s the funny part—the rage embraced,
However scant the cause, however bland,
Is just as deadly dangerous, despite
Its trivial origins, as world war three.
He jumped the line, she cut me off, the sight
Of swastikas, my injured pride—the glee
Of purple rage, once triggered, propels breath
Beyond reason, maims, ends with mindless death.
(5/15/11)