hamster

My heart is racingpumping madly.
I am a small thing, true
but this is beyond the norm
for my mammalian frame.

Rather, I feel like I've been quietly fed
into a new pushbutton universe, where
everything whirrs and clickhums
mechanically. I feel my clumsy flesh straining
to replicate the metal ballet, feel
its grossness, its lumpy and imperfect solidarity,
and know that if i tried once more to
compete with the machines I would be reduced
to a sliver, a ghost, a spark
to be consumed quickly in the circuits, by the need
intense and white
for human power.

So instead I become what my heart says I am
I am the hamster on the wheel,
I am the small warm thing trapped
and helpless by the powers that be
running swiftly
never knowing where I'm going
realizing slowly that it doesn't matter

and nursing small memories, childlike
of how it felt to run on grass.