Quid pro fauxbia (poem)

Quid pro fauxbia

The fear of human society

Quid pro fauxbia

Lye over the discarded fruit

Heaped in fermenting waste

And burn or atomize

Disrupt the life cycle of the fly

Maggots thrive in their maggotry so have no reason

To care that their own days are numbered

Barbed edged rain falls on the human state

Too appalling

Its head in the trough of carny bilge

The nut inside

Beaten time and again until

The brain is almond paste and memory’s kernel

Of terror responds

To a shadow looming sideways

Or the call note of a bird

Quid pro fauxbia

calmly

The Minister of Inaction

(2016, Stephanie Foster)