Patient Zero One Poem by Francie Lynch

I


Zero One and modern blight

Travel at the speed of light.


We wondered on the Wandering Jew,

Or, in lieu,

Orthon, Urian or Lilitu.


We trepanned our empty skulls,

Searched our humours,

Were touched by Rulers!


Now troubling symptoms of want and need,

Have blighted growth of yester-seed.


Patient Zero left no lead.


East fingered West

(and vice versa)

Was Ireland really the cause of cholera?

Did Blacks languish in Tuskegee squalor?

We christened Mary, but drank the water.

Fracked Incubus and Succubus

From son and daughter.


Patient Zero left the slaughter.


We deprived the depraved of their tea

To cure wandering womb hyteriae.

Deviances and leaking lesions

Were headwaters of women's semen.


Patient Zero has no season.


The barber sensed it might be smell,

So widened streets became pell mell hell.

And wastelands swelled

Where curled cats dwelled.

(No talk of Michelangelo)



II


Our children's blight has a techno name,

Like the rose, IT smells the same.

With zero tolerance I lay blame

On screens and phones and video games.


The world wide box stores flipped their lids,

Touching all who crawl social grids;

From the base of Mammon's pyramid.


Now Jake believes he's a gangsta dude

Since posting whatever on You Tube.

Nothing to gain, nothing to lose.

No services rendered but expects what's due.


Inflated egos are a system symptom,

Clearing firewalls, reaching children.


Patient Zero is no phantom.


There is no tale of mouse or flea

As cause of lost immunity.

There is no open sore to fester:

A Selfie is the X-ray picture.


Patient Zero is that much swifter.


In our gel of techno bliss,

On our elliptic petrie dish,

Bathed in more than we could wish,

Pied-Piper Zero will finish,

And with that whimper

All vanish.