Of Mice and Mankind

“It was a turning point for me,” said the biology professor to the class we co-teach, “when my professor grabbed the lab mouse and flung it against the wall.”

And you have tears in your eyes
As you depict the hand, pale, hairy
Unapologetic, the hand of a master
And the lab mouse, blind, cancer-ridden
Yet happy to be a mouse, still alive

Then the rage, the fling against the wall
And the spine, the brain, the heart
Splashing like asteroids

It awakened something in me, you say
Tears in your eyes, I’m no long the same

As you watch the human “mouse”
In the teeth of the revenge machine
Invisible, raged, raging
The same spine, muscle, limbs, bones, brain
--Genes that share 99% DNA--
Flung across your path

As you stand in the ruins
As you walk through this razor sharp silence
As you wade into the sea of bloody sacrifice

Are you willing to say: it awakens something?

And say: this hand, this yellow, brown, black hand
Makes the same delicious meals
Makes the same beautiful sonnets
Splits cells with the same precision?

Are you willing to acknowledge
Our milk is just as white and nourishing
Our blood just as red with boiling sea
And our need to be human or mice is just as legit?

How do you keep the same
As you watch this human mouse
Who breaks bread and knowledge with you daily
Flung against your wall of conscience
Over and over and over…