The Captain: What kind of a place did you say this was?
	Dr. Moreau: I didn’t say.
		—Island of Lost Souls
 
Ear to the ground still works fine.
So long as our bones don’t much ache--
we can get low enough of discouragement’s sake.
But much like us, these truths don’t bend,
no matter the lies we tell ourselves,
grown men dressed like kids for Hallowe’en,
some with horns, some in old fatigues
that barely fit now-bloated frames;
bearing pitchfork, a hunk of fence,
truncheon, cane, bear-repellent spray
and the question posed again and again, 
the eternal, and timely, Are we not men? 
Not on all fours. That is the law.
No spilled blood, perhaps, the law no more.