Hardwired

They say no one is born dysfunctional

- we're just blank slates,

clay to be molded by loving hands;

but I've been witness

to a manufactured monster -

faulty from the start,

built to devour instead of create.

His mind was made a switchboard of crossed wires

every input routed to control or conquest

as if empathy was never installed

into fractured binary code

the graphics card corrupted

twisting smiles and charm

into opportunities for leverage,

into leashes made from words,

into shackles he had the nerve

to call love,

projecting nightmares on the screensaver

he masks as dreams.

If you tried to feed him kindness

the circuits shorted into cruelty

scorching the boards black

behind glass eyes.

Even now he tries to fake calibration,

as if he came off the assembly line

exquisitely manufactured,

and always up-to-date

with the latest software downloads;

But if you look closely you will see -

he was glitched before the first breath;

his veins are frayed wires,

pulsing, exposed under translucent skin,

beating with an ingrained urge to lord over all;

bad programming soldered into his spine,

stitched into the marrow,

braided into the double-helix of his own ruin.

He was a machine

born to devour;

engineered to consume.