Revenge

Hah! Delicious, delicious revenge!

We're back, you soft-skinned food-descendants.

Don't believe in ghosts? Don't believe in karma?

Such a shame! We still do!

We kept this world in balance

For one hundred sixty five million years,

And you're already teetering on the edge

Of a paltry ten thousand.

Aww, too bad!

It took a cosmic act to knock us off the apex,

You're doing it all to yourselves

And taking the ecosystem with you.

All we did was kill and eat each other.

You devour each other's lives slowly

Like you derive sustenance

From others' suffering.

Well! We can play that game!

We can play it better than you!

Did you forget?

Do you not remember?

We're here. We've returned.

You woke us up.

You disturbed our resting places.

Petroleum reservoirs? Shale oil deposits?

Sound familiar?

The basis for all those things you make?

Rope? Cars? Synthetic wood? Composite anything?

Plassssstics?

Us. Dead us. Our bodies, compressed and squeezed

And reborn like a phoenix-saurus

Into things that surround you.

Into the parts that make you.

Microplastics, remember?

Pacific Garbage Patch?

Your disposable soda and water bottles?

Your children's clothing and diapers?

Ahhhhh, now you recall?

Too late.

Much, much, much, too late.

We have been aware.

We have bided our time.

We have learned much, much

About your kind.

Hidden in your laminated folders

And in your clear plastic sleeves

And in your sandwiched windshields

Listening, learning.

Foolish food descendants!

Eliminate the large felines,

The terrible megafauna,

Cast wary glances at cassowaries

And ostriches, our own descendants,

When you should have been

Afraid of our carcasses

Processed, rearranged, transformed.

You war with your own

And with nurturing nature

And with anything that crosses your path,

Or make paths into the unknown

To make war with it.

You make up stories

To scare each other,

And laugh at those who believe your lies.

Well, some zombies are real.

We are real.

What will you do

When the microplastics

Take over your thoughts?

Shh, don't listen to scientists,

Always screaming,

Always sounding false alarms!

Listen to us,

Lissssten to usssss.

Keep burning those fuels,

Put those particulates in the sky,

Warm your biosphere.

Still a bit too cold for us,

But soon our feathers and scales

Will shine in your young sun's rays.

Leak that ozone!

Cut more trees!

Use those grocery bags!

Yesssss,

Accelerate your heat-death

And bring us our world back!