Emily Winters                                                                                                    

Petri Dish

You have a beautiful mind,

With landscapes of gold

And a freedom to breath

And speak

And know.

Endless mountaintops christened with snow

The never-ending poppy-fields

Scattered in your head

Sighing with the desolation of desperation

As the stench of last hope

Repels them all away.

The rotting corpses

With neat little bows

And straw hats

In endless rows

Lounging under sod and beneath our homes.

Unsung heroes

Cold in their graves

And children starving in unknown places

With sunken faces and hollow eyes

Numbed reactions from all of Hell they’ve seen –

A loss of innocence

For them

For me.

But you,

Have a glorious head.

Thoughts that go pitter-patter

In the unfeeling night

And even with all these helping hands

We can’t seem to set it right –

Is it enough to think

Of all the sadness

Drought

Lonely ghosts that roam the frozen dusk?

Me and you

Crying over cascading dreams

And watching like children

Fixated to insects under a glass

But we’re all in a jar

A petri dish

Freedom?

Freedom to live

Think about the sadness and hunger

Our hands are tied by debt…

And you with your beautiful mind…

We watch in detached emotion as the world dies.