Another Plague

The first faceless body
The tidemark on the shore
An anonymous hand clutches a toy

Another faceless body
Under the cold flat light
The chalk cliff reflector, unveils the night

Another plague, another threat dividing
Unrecognised, unmade

Another plague, invasion of the faceless
The influx of the nameless
Landing at the shore
Another plague
Vectors cross the border
The panic spreads, on a plague siege island

Another plague, another quarantine collapses
Another plague, rear-guard fight at breaching borders
Another plague, another face that's disassembled
All the pieces there, but the patterns gone, it spreads

I dissect, I stain, the tissue's secrets prove
One of many, hidden away
Searching for the parasite, but there's nothing there...
There's nothing there

First those with the least, the ones we'd hate to be
Then it spread, stealing faces of those who look different
It's now so widespread, we've given up containment
I can't recognise my friends, they don't recognise their children
I'm scared of the mirror, I'm hiding from the image
The blind spot in the picture, as my face disappears
There was nothing to see in the skin and the bone
No problem with the fragments, the problem with the whole

The combined isn't born in the world, it's made inside
I turn my attention to the underside
The fusiform gyrus, yellowed and shrunken
The distorted spindle of cortical ribbon
The infection that summons
The killers and eaters
In the grey matter structures of facial recognition
The pathology not in the face of the victims
But deeply embedded in those who bear witness