For We Shall Be Smitten

The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. – Isaiah 24:5

But, we are as nature’s largest filthy rats: swarming disgustingly & destructively all across this planet

Forever making heedless noise, rooting up the earth in a toxic corpro-pursuit of individual happiness

Producing huge clouds of evil smelling smoke burning our trash, right along with the lilies of the field

But, one way or another all this too shall violently pass without a trace in but a wink of geologic time

Our hatred of our brothers increases in direct proportion to our own insupportably-excessive numbers

We routinely loose deadly force upon each other at the international, national, local & family levels

Tellingly, our species has even been able to bring on the 6^th of earth’s great mass extinction events

Meanwhile, we welcome our next Dark Age, braying a loud, scornful rejection of education & reason

None of our 1 True Gods can protect His flock from the blind natural retribution we so richly deserve

Yea, the soils that our corporate overlords have poisoned shall in turn strike them down as well as us

When at last it becomes obvious to all, we will grow angry, asking why & then shout: It’s not fair!

But worry not, for we will go down fighting: Fighting each other over a few pitiful remaining scraps

The correction will not be vengeful, but rather a simple, blind and natural correction of our excesses

Yet, most shall tiredly insist that our misfortunes are the wrath of our many & petty, One True Gods

For as the wages of sin is death, so shall our reward for ecological devastation be societal extinction

We shall be smitten and, of course, we shall cry out in fear & anger, begging for mercy & forgiveness

Leaders note: All of us shall be smitten, not just the brainwashed moochers who keep supporting you

Though our population growth shows a steep increase, its decline shall be far faster & much steeper

And there will be no enemy bogeymen to vilify as the poisoned earth adjusts itself - At our expense

The blind hand of the marketplace shall be shackled by the handcuffs of resource over-exploitation

& all of their industry-backed, libertarian, fake-news campaigns won’t prevent our fall from grace

We shall at last realize that we have narrowed our precious children’s futures to a mere base survival

But through monstrous brutality and adapting to disease-ridden squalor they may carry on-for a while

Odd fellows, as monks once did, will again try to save bits of our wisdom from the returning Dark Age

Tragically, vast quantities of digital spam, tweets, selfies, updates & advertising will be lost…forever

Yet, fittingly, a geologic layer of legacy plastic litter shall mark our passing…for millions of years

But, not that long for the trillions of $ worth of weapons & ammunition we have so lovingly produced

Beacons of freedom shall continue to comically advocate for slashing taxes & regulations as solutions

But they shall not fail to cut infrastructure, education and basic research while increasing dEfense

Yet, all the expensive lobbyists put together won’t be able to protect their wealthy donor’s interests

So, naturally young men will be called on to bravely sacrifice in holy wars over vanishing resources

And still, none of our leaders will mention our own overpopulation as being the root of our vexations

Lo, that rabid anti-environmentalist shall be put down right next to this squishy green tree hugger

Media’s Traditional Family Values will not spare our exceptionist children being punished as well

The seemingly pointless suffering shall leave us with nothing to believe in…and little to hope for

So shall our most rich sense of entitlement be at last fulfilled: In hunger, filth, disease and ignorance

Twirling Figurines

Events shattered my life into a million pieces, each of which continued on fractally - but without me

But, once I accepted the Word, all nagging contradictions disappeared behind comfy blinders of faith

Bouncing roughly past in a beatup bus, it really hurt to realize no one should have to live as they did

I saw the evidence of our progress taken from space and it was not pride in humanity that filled me

Idly spinning a fallen leaf between her fingers, it suddenly played a large part in her life

Accidentally dropped, it is instantly swirled away in that tiny stream by which she sits

She had been all the forever I had ever known, and as much as I had ever needed

And, as she left me so slowly, day by day, she made a place within me that was cold & dark & empty

Looking up from my microscope I saw protesters swirling thru the streets up there on the big screen

After reading the Fine Print, the Big Picture grew too confusing for me to remain truly comfortable

Multiplicative tiny mutations and then, one sunny morning, I would never again arise from my bed

But still, there weren’t ever so many crumbs on our filthy floor as stars outside in that moonless sky

Hurtling past a small turtle foolishly trying to cross that busy road, I briefly lost my sense of purpose

Oddly, their saving a 5^th generation single mother from an abortion roused no thankful prayer in me

As I grew progressively more unneeded and unwanted, I learned at last the value of volunteerism

I wound up staring quite blankly as all I had once been was silently emitted as invisible lost memories

Obsessed with her inability to control her kids’ lives she instead micromanaged her corporate team

Watching raindrops softly ping the lake for days, I realized that reality could move at different paces

Skimming the geological time periods left me with a larger sense of eternity than I dared to entertain

The spending excesses of our brave entrepreneurial class filled me with envy until I heard their ideals

Now driving too slowly, it came to me that I had become an impediment to their pursuit of happiness

Flowing on the busy day to day currents, I was only very rarely afforded a sense of my own mortality

Looking back, I saw only a shifting collage of randomly sorted images that I could not even sequence

But every morning we said “I love you” and every night would end with a gentle kiss

I always had a sense that I had time remaining for those many things I had chosen to triage for later

I drew few clues from bearing casual witness to fine things broken and the end of countless tiny lives

I danced along with all the rest to the time-warping tunes of the politicians and other marketeers

Too often I falsely promised that I would take time to consider events receding in my rearview mirror

The endless daily toll of species disappearing at our hands grew quite wearisome and lost all effect

Should our MakeItCheaper, IncreaseTheMargin ingenuity engender a stirring pride in humanity in me?

Upon my return after so long I was surprised to see how large the trees at our old house had grown

So, we twirled & we danced thru dirty streets under smoggy skies, high on a fat-free HappyEverAfter