Sapiens

When a dog dies,

it just dies.

Horizontal,

returned to the ground,

until it loosens

into the grammar of soil;

as if liberation

was always fluid.

Other dogs continue.

A life in dog years

does not permit philosophy.

When a Sapiens dies,

it is never about death.

Not even about the dead.

I could have said

man, woman, people, 

but identity

is a stove left on;

look away long enough,

and it learns your name

by burning it.

Such are the times of Sapiens.

Sapiens:

an honourable skin to wear.

What other species

pets what it perfects killing?

Feeds it, names it,

breeds obedience into survival;

because survival,

once negotiated,

begins to look like love.

When a Sapiens dies,

it refuses to be just death.

Dying is too small

for a creature

that brewed religion

out of its own reflection,

and drank

until it believed

it could not spill.

It is not about the dead;

that would require letting go.

So the Sapiens keeps them.

Opens them.

Defines them.

Thinks through them, 

until philosophy

rearranges the corpse

into something

the living

can survive.

The Sapiens call it life;

wishing the living were dead

in the quiet mildew

of unventilated rooms.

The Sapiens call it mourning;

wishing the dead were alive

in the loud theatre

of refrigerated grief.

You would think

it values death

more than life;

a species

that can make meat

of anything,

and marinate itself

to taste.

Or that it cares

for the living and the dead

equally;

nothing,

until it can be sold:

in parts,

or whole.

But what do you know

of Sapiens.

What do you know

of honour.

Sapiens

is everything

that refuses to end

when it should.

You wish, 

instead of letting the dead stay dead, 

you could exhume them,

fingernails full of soil,

half-chewed silence in your mouth,

just to prove

you can still make

meaning

bleed.