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Description
"There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return." – Franz Kafka, Aphorisms (1918)

The creature wakes. It is surprised
(it is not a very bright creature) –
it had expected something different:
a certain tension alleviated by the fluid unfolding of limbs
enwrapped in musty sheets smelling of unmeasured breaths;
sinew, perhaps.

But the creature is imperturbable to such sensations –
they are vestigial, or rather,
were never developed beneath the odorless underbelly of tatty loveseats.

One dull sense remains it:
the most pungent of scents can arouse
a kind of quivering ecstasy in its lawless appendages.

But it seems now to have no appetite,
and it leans against the metal window ledge in a dumb stupor,
viscous secretions pooling beneath its bulk.
How could such a creature
not be bored?
Everything it sees is muddled
into a grainy, leaden pea soup.

It lingers, and dies.
Its carapace is black and curled
like an overroasted walnut.

Comical, the way its foreleg lays rigid on its chest plate
as a human hand will clutch at a heart.

Description
"There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return." – Franz Kafka, Aphorisms (1918)

The creature wakes. It is surprised
(it is not a very bright creature) –
it had expected something different:
a certain tension alleviated by the fluid unfolding of limbs
enwrapped in musty sheets smelling of unmeasured breaths;
sinew, perhaps.

But the creature is imperturbable to such sensations –
they are vestigial, or rather,
were never developed beneath the odorless underbelly of tatty loveseats.

One dull sense remains it:
the most pungent of scents can arouse
a kind of quivering ecstasy in its lawless appendages.

But it seems now to have no appetite,
and it leans against the metal window ledge in a dumb stupor,
viscous secretions pooling beneath its bulk.
How could such a creature
not be bored?
Everything it sees is muddled
into a grainy, leaden pea soup.

It lingers, and dies.
Its carapace is black and curled
like an overroasted walnut.

Comical, the way its foreleg lays rigid on its chest plate
as a human hand will clutch at a heart.