Autonomic
Stepping into my doctor’s office,
a masked woman points a gun at my head,
pulls the trigger, reads the digits
of my human form of fire.
I pass.
The right range, to a degree.
Too hot,
my skin would liquify.
Too cold,
my blood would congeal.
The genius of temperature control:
contracting muscles, secreting glands.
On a winter day,
I shiver toward equilibrium.
On a summer day,
I sweat toward homoeostasis.
Democracy strives to be an autonomic,
an all-for-one, one-for-all self-correcting system.
Stereoscopic
I walk into an eyeglass store,
the walls lined with frames
for framing lenses paired
to help me clearly see reality.
Double eyes do not give double vision.
They merge two views into a single,
three-dimensional image of the world,
correcting a Cycloptic disadvantage.
Have we been manacled by monocle politics?
Democracy requires a stereoscopic vision
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Cycloptic = adjective from the Cyclops, a one-eyed creature found
in chapter 9 of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus blinded the Cyclops
so his men could escape the giant’s cave .