Some kind of failure

A quarter-block wedge
Ousted from the side of the young man’s head
His cortex only partly-pulped
A few good books forgotten
Look at him, he’s a loitering soul of the century.
Chipped at as he rolls on the smoke
Carving crumbling slipstreams as he’s caught on a breeze.
Knick, scratch, fold, look at him float like a snowflake.
…a paper cut-out by a sloppy six year old.

Now look at this automated service arm and its vacant business
It tills the land, sowing cables and
As the young man gaily skips
His lightest skip in his grazed open shell
The arm tears his head clean from its roots!
Chopped and diced a metallic taste worsens on his tongue.
Bloody dismemberment spews forth this gory pageant
The young man bumps along his path
– whack, didn’t see that coming –
While his young pup head rolls in severed silence
Dutifully behind.

He walks off into the distance
Further than I can see
His trace washed away by today’s unnaturally heavy rain.
Looking the other way there’s the next young man
Same surface cracks, same state of dismantlement.
With an industrial wheeze the iron arm looms again
- Is there nothing I can do about this? -

I think, and fear for his head
But it’s too late for that
- Riiiiiiiiiiiiiip -
It’s grabbed mine instead