Head up, into the brain scanner,
A machine for a skull-cap, strapped in
To prevent wandering, idle thoughts.
Technicians, trolling their keyboards,
Take only the best men,
Only the best people put their heads
In the snare, in the chrome room,
In the plastic hospital, in the tin city.
In the tin city. The machine is counting
Its own revolutions around the skull,
Touching a dumb probe to spot after spot
In the skull, in the brain, for the soft spot,
The inevitable corruption of the spirit.
Only the best people are aware enough to be sick,
To want, to desire, counting the revolutions
As the brain turns around in its snare.
As the brain turns around, snared by its knowledge,
The body upside down in its grip,
Held there by fiat, by fate, by centrifical force
The self spinning around. Or thrust, head down,
Into the chrome, into the vault underground
Like a miner for tin, for gold, who crawls on his back
Head-first, into the hole he has made that goes
Under the river-bed, under the city, belly up,
Belly down, pressed against clay, arms barely able
To scrabble forward to the spot last pressed
To release the ore, the gold, the dark sore
To be seen where the light underground is tied to a spot
With his shape and no more, the spot in the scanner,
Deep in the earth where it turns round, the snare
For the spirit turning round as though it would never let go.
