Just sacks of organs and various fluids, pressurized and pumping.

Air gaskets operating from first non-liquid inhalation to death rattle.

Muscles, connective tissues, wrapped in parcels by fascia.

We are marvelous machines of foamy, bubbly, tacky, slick, gelatinous stuff.

We are gristle, bone, lovely stuff, and have silver skin under the epidermis.

Nerves strung like fiber optic cables through the city of the body.

Interconnected adaptive systems with hubs overseeing load, output,

energy consumption, and functioning- adjusting flow in real time.

We are such exceptional entities constructed of awful offal.

Physicians are just basic mechanics who keep us running.

We consume fuel, need fluids checked, require regular maintenance.

Once the “Check Engine Light” or the dashboard alerts illuminate,

personal Vegas Strips, neon LED museums of red,

yellow, orange dinging  alerts, it is too late.Then we go to the specialists,

experts who can butcher the meat, who can prepare and part us out,

update timing chains of neural codes and maladaptive software

that no longer functions for us, removes the electrocuted squirrel

remains, just fur, teeth and claws over sinew by then,

from our gnawed and faulty wiring harnesses. Installs

new parts, upgrades, tunes us up to keep the complicated

mysterious machinery running, does body work to repair

collision damage from other bodies of time and objects in space.

We require thick skins as it is the only thing that defines us.

Thick rinds that separate us into self-contained entities,

otherwise we are mere masses of pulp and pith, food waste,

contaminated by piss, shit, and bile. Off-cuts, sold by the 50# pouch,

meat by-products only useful for processing as animal feed.

Without thick skins, we are overfilled acid-filled water balloons,

threatening to pop and wielded by a universe playing too rough.

Everyone is either placated or not overly concerned with their control over

the consciousness that animates it, the incorporeal whatsit,

the thing that thinks, loves, feels, intuits, writes poetry. We’ve old ghosts

inside everyone. The playground of childhood instructs in casual cruelties

and minor casualties, Skinned knees, cuts, scrapes, humiliations, sprains

and strains, and broken bones. They are not the end of the world,

though that moment is the entire sum and eclipsing totality of

a child’s existence. They will learn all about catastrophic failures

in due time. Regardless of color, make, model or year. Life with a human body.

All jaws are the jaws of life,

And still, no one ever gets out alive.