Thoughts on Our Nature

I spoke to a lemur

the other day

and he told me how the monkeys came

and murdered his family

I woke up the next morning and

though I had dreamt it

I could hear the trees stretching

groaning and

smothering one another

The insects were no different

waves of hard-shelled killers

the ants I watched at lunch

fought over a scrap of sand

the heads of their enemies adorned their knees

like trophies

and the children of the defeated

became slaves to the hive

above me in the rafters spiders span

death-traps for unwary travellers

their lethal engineering

spanned great empty voids

and spread until it clotted the empty spaces

they bred and bred until all that was left

was one another

then ate until the last curled up

and ended.