All the Shrimp I Can Eat
They are swimming away from me at the speed of light
They are telling me this is their preferred way to die
The conversion en masse into a single stream of brightness
Not the tenebrous slog through my digestive process
I say that’s only one part of a complex corporate sacrifice
They say fair enough but it’s the part we’d like to emphasize
Then take off, all you shrimp, you only call to mind how often
To live has felt like the long, drawn-out migration
Through the body of a god, one who elects to eat each of us
If not out of hunger, then boredom, or in an act of love impervious
To human reasoning (very possibly it’s all three at once)
And our birth is when he swallows, and his acids are events
That break us down, and after he’s extracted from
Our bodily existence what he needs, the gritty residuum
At bottom is what we call the soul, and this he then exerts
Through his infinite wisdom, grinds into a powder, and snorts.
