The label on the medicated ointment commands
Apply a thin layer to the affected area
But what difference does it make
To the cells of the affected area
How thick is the layer of ointment applied
For is it not true that
If a little does a little good
Then a lot must do a lot of good

It is not true apparently

The flagellated bacterium
Responds to stimuli
Swims toward pleasure and away from pain
Lucretius counsels that humans
Adopt this model of nature’s way
Accepting and exploiting the whim of fortune

But in nature humans have lost their place
Opting for the ecology of Tatooine
And how suspicious is that crude simplicity
Whole planets of logic or hostility
A world of winter

Air conditioning rapid transport
Fabrication in permanent polymer
A torrent of symbolic forms streaming and on demand
Suspiciously simple
Inequitably allocated
Universally hurtful
Second nature a vicious parody of the first

Swimming toward satisfaction
Often sublimated by art politics or religion
Observing therefore the golden mean
Murder most moderate
Conditioned by dearth only to gorge
Two thousand centuries of famine or feast
A thousand thousand millennia of fiction and fact