The Augmented Child

Bakelite rotors turn and crack their dust
to pepper the pink flesh of my infant brain.
My cold arm waves in the anmiotic sky.
My hole-of-mouth gapes a strange cry.

The long road back
down the arms of tree
to my father
and his,
and cold peasants' slate hearth
to plague and hopeful Christ
to bitter fields, conquest,
caves and searching
for food among the snows
of glacial history,
back to battle and nest
claw and spittle
to reaching for sunrise heat
in shallow seas of
warm community.

The flowers weep under a smoked moon
and retreat into brown irrelevance.

A fist of wasps emerge from a wound,
a new life below a carapace of awe.
Augmented with a machine seed,
I was human, now I am more.

© Mark Sheeky. Permission is required for reproduction.