All the Fighting Words

For all the

days

that we will,

not lost

on all the days when we won’t.

Public health requirements and sanctioned claustrophobia a

small price to pay while I three-hundred-and-sixty degree the fallout

and wonder,

What on earth did WE buy?

Unprecedented growth and better choices?

Charitable spirits unleashed on a suffering planet making all non-profits obsolete?

After all this time

surely

we solidified mastery in reverence

holding the bewildered and broken,

weaving mercy blankets

to pre-empt injustice cold as Arctic ice.

Never taking eyes off the real enemy

while combining strategies and closing ranks

because life is life when you get right down to it,

the packaging don’t matter.

The gods had no part in this madness.

The humans did.

Something to be said

for having to examine your mess and ingest your denial.

To survive paradigm-shifting dimensions,

stop believing that it needs to be this way

or that way,

or nature can’t function,

can’t renew,

can’t self-protect,

persevere,

and punish you for your crimes.

You fighting for clean air ain’t you?

Got documentation and longitudinal studies,

proposed conferences,

and world summits of bureaucracy

as common sense and logic sit alone in abandoned basements of buildings

awaiting the wrecking ball’s strike from signalled demolition crews.

Can’t make this stuff up.

We have been wearing masks

long before we had to wear masks.

Selecting outer rim portions of self and soul to share self-styled obliviousness

beyond our doorsteps.

We invented socially distant.

Citing legal statutes and compassion fatigue due to chain of command

and the way things are done and—

Wait—who is it that can’t breathe again?

You don’t hafta shoot for a record in hard-headedness just to prove

percent degrees of stupid.

Turn around

and look at a track record no inhabitant can be proud of.

So stop clearing trails.

Let the damn grass grow

and the air clear.

Bother the indigenous tribes,

the Innu, San, Guaranì

one more time

and see what happens.

Leave nested eggs to feather-soft warmth of life’s vested interest in life

and don’t touch the corals on your way out.

But should you find it too great a temptation to keep your hands to yourself,

put them together to aid the most downtrodden among you.

For desperate souls losing health and hope.

To ignorance seeking knowledge

and wisdom.

And when you’ve done that

pick up something.

Anything.

To draw a line in the sand

and make it known

that anyone who desecrates Mama Earth begs for death

and you

are duty bound

to bus’

they

ass.

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