Until We Are Pure Spirit at the End

Simeon ben Azzai
Is said to have commented
Man would be even better,

More glorious than the beasts
Than man already was, if
Only he could shit perfume

Or balsam instead of turds.
Oh, culture, always trying
To free yourself from your beast.

One imagines perfumed men
All dying of diseases
Spread by their pretty feces,

Too well-cultured to avoid.
Well, that was nineteen-hundred
Rings around the sun ago.

Simeon ben Azzai
Is a footnote in a book
On embodiments of God.

Nowadays, culture’s dreaming
Of escaping through AI.
Oh, man, your perfumed thoughts then!