Go With Your Gut
by Bill Stinson
When a child scrapes his head
And infection ensues,
‘Cause his ma’s tender kiss
Fails to plug up the ooze,
Then the floodgates fly open,
The guardrails come down.
And corporal integrity’s
Lost at the crown.
The heebies and jeebies,
They course through the skin.
Immuno cells herald
The skirmish within.
Though the boy may survive
His frame not forsaken,
The soul’s something else
All stirred up and shaken.
For life is determined
To settle in places
Where nobody looks
And few fire traces.
Soon the colony’s set
The encampment secured,
The internalized biome
Of microbes inured.
They join the great fleet
Of bacterial swell
Where thirty-nine trillion
Rogue foreigners dwell.
Since the spring of the span
Of our hominid kind,
This mob’s called the shots
In the shade of the mind.
They pull at our tendons,
The marionette strings,
And pump the pneumatics
That juice up our bling.
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They generate thoughtscapes
That mimic free will,
And activate airways
With words that sound chill.
In the end, scarce a ‘Vinci
Could think up a copter
Without the consent
Of these bodies adopter.
And remember that famous
First step on the moon?
The credit belongs to a
Germ named McGoon.
What nobody knows
Is the measure to which
The little homuncular
Buggers insist
On running the show
And meshing their wills
To conduce an old codger
To chug up the swill.
So the next time you feel
You’re not feeling yourself,
Just go with your gut
Because that’s who you are.
