Death Wish
You can lead a horse out of a fire,
and he’ll run right back in, he said,
laconic in the aftermath of ruin,
the loss of his barn and herd;
laid out cold with a concussion
on the second try at saving them
from the flames, lucky to be
alive. Some unkiltered appetite
skews the gyroscope of sense,
mole in a riddled hemisphere
of the equine brain.Current sequencing shows that
even the humble banana shares
our DNA. Maybe this behaviour
is a consequence of whatever
mutation cascades lemmings
into fjords, muddled rodents
mad to eschew logic,
bargain the here-and-now
for apple-pie-in-the-sky.The burning doorway beckons
in a billion little heads.
On the TV screen, state after state
turns red.
©2007 F.J. Bergmann"Death Wish" appeared in the Atlanta Review Fall/Winter 2007 and recieved an International Publication Prize.