Polios

True wilderness never was
Beyond the final border.
If you want what’s wild, unkempt,

You have to go between lines,
Into cordon sanitaires,
In the lands of wall sickness,

Where people have created
Exactly the kind of world
That haunts you—the quarantined,

The No-man’s land, forbidden,
Always partly occupied,
Always dangerous, always

Feral, lawless, violent,
Under suspicion, holding
Anyone inside or out

Under suspicion as well.
Within, not beyond, the pales,
Zone of possible disease,

Probable land mines, ruins,
Middens, mutants, and toxins,
Officially DMZ.

That’s where your fantasies thrive,
Not in the pristine outside
Of uncorrupted Edens.

Think harder about that word,
Wild. Not really natural,
Is it? Wastes. That’s the spirit.