by Matt Barnes
In hospitals where diseased patients
lay
Dying from a mysterious
infection,
The doctors can only gasp in
dismay,
For the germs have approached
perfection.
-
Misled by dishonest
authorities,
We grew complacent of
pathology.
Thanks to regulations and
formalities,
Evolution beat
biotechnology.
-
Now fierce superstrains have spread
everywhere.
Many lives will fall to a single
sneeze.
A most tragic effect of this health
scare:
Fellow men are seen as vectors of
disease.
-
Draconian laws are passed and
enforced.
Families condemned to die inside
their
homes.
Feeling no pity, governments stay
their
course
As they transform houses into
catacombs.
-
As your immune system continues to
wane,
Globs of pus erupt from a skin
lesion.
The germs release neurotoxins in
your
brain.
Then you're zombified, robbed of
speech and
reason.
-
Hysteria and insanity
abound.
The infected people constantly
dance.*
Dancing until they collapse to the
ground,
Their duress fuels their unbreakable
trance.
-
Fue cito, vade longe, redetarde--
Flee quickly, go far, return much
later.
This grim Latin warning haunts us
today,
Said for the Black Plague and this
one
greater.
-
The world desperately searches for
the
cure,
But the human race has run out of
time.
We've undervalued life and that is
sure:
The reason why we're buried in
lime...
-
* Dancing mania was rampant in the
1360's
while the plague was decimating Europe. People who succumbed to
dancing
mania would dance until they collapsed or even died. Psychologists
concluded that this mania was the result of people trying to cope with
all the
deaths. During a similiar but unrelated epidemic, an unidentified
virus
struck Italy in the 1500's, and many of its victims became bipolar
manic-depressives. While they were in a manic mood, they
frantically spun
and danced like spiders spinning webs. This later epidemic was
called
tartantism, as it was (wrongly) believed that the disease was caused by
tartantulas.
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