A Poem for Humanity

I haven’t written a poem in a while, but a combination of what’s been going on in the world recently and my psychology studies brought this together for me: we’re really just a bundle of nerve endings and electricity, of muscles and bones and chemicals, and somewhere beneath all of that, our thoughts, our loves and hates, our fears and hopes – our soul.

Humanity

Place them all ‘neath a microscope one

by one. Beyond differences,

an assault of similarities:

kidneys, lungs and heart. Further in, a

twisting acid helix underwrites

an interplay of the invisible.

Search a spangled web

of brain tissue to try and find

where thoughts are born,

where they think they’re going to and

what they want to make them do.

Beginning or ending, an inability to untangle:

neuron billions sprout limbs that intertwine,

latticework branches hurtling electricity—

choking one another even as thoughts

begin somewhere beyond knowing

in the darkness before consciousness.

Mechanical processes spark forth words

and clenched fists, writing

in unseen molecules, our humanity

while along we do not know, cannot see,

growing a world of forests and

within us all — a fragmented tree.

— Ana.