We are unruly children. Earth cries.
Enslaved by consumerism we twist
and buckle like spoons
as we choke on our own deliverance,
turn away from idealism,
the very concept of change
being naive recollection
of times gone by, not our own.

But it comes. Like a wave it comes,
crashing the party, forcing division,
the loss of false pride
in chimeras, heat-seeking missiles,
clever accounting and other lies.

A jam and bread takeover is implied
but oh no,
it’s worse than that,
you can’t butter your knife
when the cows have died.

Rivers dry and souls of clay feet bleed,
kids are sacrificed, seeds laid waste to,
the overly aniseed taste, almost charcoal,
pulling tight the noose in dead of warm
November night. It is a quiet banshee,
carbon. Yet it hisses like a cobra,
wraps an arm around us,
necessary antibody and antithesis
to oxygen, all that Mother gives
or gave. Until we took and stripped,
asset managed and procrastinated.

It’s a funny old world, they say.
Will our fossils tell of victory
or systemic failure
come the layers of time?