Ruthless chemistry rained on them:
An army of poisonous needles
Invaded primitive nervous systems
And skewered them.
Then ensued the desultory scurrying
The involuntary spasmodic disarray
Their eventual submission; lying on their backs; legs bent inwardly
Reminiscent of human foetuses resting in wombs.
Escape proved futile for others:
They were flattened between floor and shoe, or became
The obituary sections of rolled-up newspapers.
Creatures that could survive a nuclear holocaust
Met their end in the decay, inherent to the human heart.
We kill our own kind out of the same emotions
And with the same ruthlessness
That we exterminate cockroaches
A rare instance
Of unbiased behaviour.
