Mind Zoo

The mind keeps a small zoo of infections.

One of them sleeps in a corner of the nerves, pretending to be harmless as a folded umbrella.

Give it the right obedience, a little humidity of fear, and it stirs— opens an eye the way an old god does when someone remembers its name.

Some folks train it to sit politely in church basements, to wag its tail at hymns, to behave under fluorescent lights.

Others comb it for its most dangerous shine, teach it to growl at the scent of doubt, carry the word heritic in its teeth like a gift.

It keeps trying to make itself at home, dragging its little suitcase from room to room— a vagrant scrawling lunatic runes over pallets of rotting decay.