End of the Line (05)

At the end of the tunnel in the light
a ball of fur will sit and please itself,
no eyes, no olfactories, or nerve-ends
for stimulus, no more limbs to move
to the end of history, the big merge

after chimeras recombined with men
who grafted prosthetics on themselves,
shape-shifting in wombs like sea-creatures,
like fish with feet or horns or occipital tails
or more extremities than they could use
to reproduce, defend, or hunt down prey.

And so the manipuss becomes a platyman
and lays his eggs upon a coastal plain,
his ancestors having grafted surplus parts on,
spare horns, shed with prehensile tails of Pan.

Dr. Moreau would blush at the horned goths
with puzzle-pieces carved in every inch of skin,
at the tumescence of the dwarfs who couple
with phone-sex housewives, at horned men,
half-toads with flickering tails and multi-tongues.

The pensive chimpanzee who pushes a broom
above the cold stone steps of the college
had melancholy injected in his mother’s embryo.