Life on Earth

One day . . .

If in poison air, clouds blacken like burnt forests,

and in pagoda-shapes tower

above sky-dark seas

where pollution-mutant plankton

gather toxin to concentrates,

and if most water in dead zones, if most fish gone,

if only jellyfish and single-celled remain

to live with decay in anaerobic waters,

then the treasure of the commons is lost for all,

and if nature’s hands fall broken,

then biological niches lie

in plastic shells floating in Sargasso Seas

adapted to wastelands of trash,

surviving on a gray ocean surface

that formed in the twilight time

when television viewers

passively watched nature programs touting

the last patches of earth’s beauty

found only in the threatened preserves.

And then, if you try to remember back

while along a debris-strewn beach walking,

memories like refugees will crowd the mind

beside the salt-sweet cradle rocking,

on a once familiar shore—where before

on sunny April noons of youth

you may have wandered

in sea spray and spindrift,

where in the dunes the children played

above once cleansing tides

and grass in waves of fresh air swayed.

. . .

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,

With love, with love.

—Walt Whitman

. . .

A mob of zombies flows over London Bridge

in the cinematic, mass mind

of those who long for an end—

I had not thought Undeath had done so, to so many.

Think of the true undead,

who devour the world

before those who would live have a chance to be born

. . .

What a piece of work is a man, or rather, is a human being,

how infinite in faculty, how infinite the beauty of the mind

with thoughts dancing like bees in the hive

for it is a joy

to be alive

and to be young

"is very heaven"

unless terrorized with violence

or by abuse

or starvation

or the fear of another nation,

ethnic group, religion, or skin coloration

but those who can afford the best, stay above the rest

and take their pleasure in food

as humankind loves to eat

the meat

of other species

in Asia 384 million people depend on fish

as their sole protein dish

as now dots of micro-plastic

enter the stomachs, bloodstream and flesh of fish

and likewise such dots enter our dreams

with visions of waste in the ocean

that may surpass the weight of the biomass

while the fish in a dying habitat

in what is called the "coral triangle"

where coral dies from the CO2 soaking

into the water and worldwide

what seemed an eternal tide of plenty

from all the reefs now 50% gone

and in 30 years will be no more

replaced by a kind of slime within our time

"Because there is nothing where we lived

and there is no rain. There is no sea and

the earth no longer works. Even all the big trees are all dead."

. . .

Colors evenly spread

on a watercolor flower the young woman had painted,

which bloomed beside her.

I saw it as the doctor's hands pushed on her stomach—

a brunette,

her chin was round

her cheeks tanned darker than her forehead

her strong mouth

pursed

then in a suck

struggling for air,

surrounding lines

creased her once lovely,

still-lovely-in-illness,

face.

Daily in summer she’d run over the dimpled batholith

washed by the sea, attracted to the sea,

pooled in the shallows, warmed—

her life blooming as, and equal to, the crown of a flower—

the woman and the pool as one

—then changed, she lay diseased

her breath shaking her,

the wheezes became screaming

her memories, when she could relax for a moment to remember,

were of summer and the sea

around her

were tremblings from death

But then again, as surviving victims always say, disasters

are just acts of God

her breath crescendoed into screams

while many wish for a scientific priesthood

to lead us into outer space

with her sisters beside her while she died

she heard low voices

in conversation talking over

what was to be remembered

as if she were already gone

. . .

the dead haunt us

and the dead to come

and the tortured haunt us

and the tortured to come

as the art of children is filled with death

when they are caught and taught in war

against the enemy always

for all enemies are evil

enemy children we don’t notice their deaths

no fresh graphics allowed

so that news gets old

but if our own side’s children go missing

then we see the pictures

repeated for years

fear is brought home and we cheer for revenge

heaping glory on the warriors

as a "war-like species" will

never stop as the war begets war

the dead fade away, the pain lulled by speaking of afterlife

. . .

"But our hearts went out to them."

. . .

People will do anything they can get away with to make money

. . .

Above the water on the path, the air humid with haze

youthful faces

in haloes of brilliant green as if the air shimmered emerald—

anything spoken was clear and the uttered words

whispers like the mist

. . .

Life strives to live; even the smallest animal

is hard to kill

and struggles momentously to live

just as our species always has

our instincts remain strong: to consume and to breed

. . .

Tilting your sex up to meet me

an open door of paradise

that crowns creation when it is

not dominion but surrender

. . .

Is Artaud's "anterior suicide" humanity's choice

as we move towards an un-creating of all species?

New mines to replace National Parks, so the plutolaters dominate,

living off the riches of the ecosystems we do not understand.

Perhaps too late for a mutation of our species,

perhaps our last gasp will be to find a refuge

in a remnant of some half-wasted wasteland.

—"human, all too human"—all alike, conscious, sapient, we call ourselves—

but bred for battle, the warrior called Arjuna,

he hesitated to fight,

then ordered by the god Krishna

"as such you are, do your work, which is war”

perhaps you see your life’s work to live as simply as you can

perhaps like Mozart you see your work to gather some patrons

to support your musical composition

or like Einstein you live quietly

and allow yourself time to think about

the Theory of Relativity,

which Oppenheimer saw as his work to make into the atomic bomb

Perhaps you think only the spawn of devils

would wish to see the earth die

you’ve heard

of suicide by cop—this is suicide by earth

while ideals swirl in chaos

few take an all-encompassing view of Reality

to see clearly all the “realities” people take to heart

Sharia law debunks the Supreme Court—

Christian law debunks the Supreme Court—

constant anti-government media cries for “checks and balances”

lust for violence rules

and survivalists/anarchists pretend to want to uphold the Constitution

. . .

“I’m an optimist because humans are very adaptable

and innovative

and always find a way to solve technological problems.”

Words our first and ultimate technology

now used as powerful tools for short term gain

—laws written by polluters and their contracts,

and their advertisements and paid-for partisan blogs overwhelm—

while vetted scientific papers amass ignored in databases

. . .

Go—& consume, that is your nature as an animal.

To breed. To consume.

Do you have a real choice? O

biodegradable

plastic we wished we had used, yes.

Fly around the world—& you must see how London, Paris,

Singapore, Abu Dhabi have changed

since you last laid your carbon

footprint there—& go

in a hurry as you must be in a hurry. The image-mad, ravenous,

primate animal you are. Not having

planned it

all out. Spontaneous! That’s your goal:

Spontaneity!

There’s no point in graphing the decline of the climate

on a napkin for your tablemates when

the gourmet meal is coming.

. . .

In the House Committee meeting, Rep. Boren of Oklahoma

said to the witnesses presenting expert testimony

that he's

"proud to be supported by the oil and gas industry"

and he's "going to stick up for them"

and he's "tired of hearing " from the people

who criticize his friends

. . .

You already have to buy filtered water.

You'll have to buy filtered air.

. . .

“Every successful species, uncontrolled by predation, over-populates.”

—only the Shakers went against instinct

and un-created their very existence—

. . .

Believing in nothing beyond the paid-for “facts” used to screen

the contradictions; everything apple-pie,

understanding nothing but a self-comforting world-view,

with the beauty of the natural world valued only as scenery.

. . .

No calm without the inner directive

to reveal yourself

to see yourself

the moment of true cognition, not prejudged, colored reality

apart from selection by the ego-directed judgment

no “true” view of reality possible without egolessness

. . .

warring nations make no plans together

warring tribes become our paradigm

warring minds form their own truths

warring realities we hold self-evident

. . .

The breaking waves draw us down to the shore

where we feel a kinship

our imaginations rapt, floating in the water, in the rise and fall

each of us a less than a droplet

as insignificant or as significant as a single diatom

tracking in endless ocean

. . .

Gov. Hickel of Alaska said,

"A tree looking at a tree really doesn't do anything.

I am opposed to conservation for conservation's sake.”

. . .

In the backcountry of the Oregon mountains

the youth of the Karuk and the Yurok peoples

still learn the shaman ways though that is not

defined by the Forest Service

as valid under its "Land of Many Uses" program.

Meanwhile all Federal employees are instructed to guard

against "conflict of interest"

with regard to disseminating ecological studies to the public

and sea-level rise is not to be discussed.

Keep all demonstrations confined

to areas away from tourists.

. . .

"No power on earth is"

A unity might be found

"stronger than the United States"

by those

"of America today and none"

who have not broken themselves

"will ever be stronger."

into schizoid pieces for their careers.

. . .

Locked in cycles of boom and bust, love and hate, us and them,

coming together or pulling away, loving or hating,

humankind follows the direction of its tools, serving technology,

breaking entire the world

into patented reductions

where renewing cycles fail and the black top-soil

loses its own nature as if we eat the blood

of the dead congealed underground,

like parasites on oil we multiply with a monied fecundity

even to fracking the farmer’s once-pure artesian spring.

. . .

My fellow Americans, I have just been informed

by my trusted advisors that our rich deposits

in the U.S. soil bank have been embezzled.

. . .

Eco = "oikos", from a Greek word meaning “household”

nomics = "nomos", a Greek word meaning “management”

Economics should be based foremost

on a knowledge of the household—ecology.

. . .

Risk is tolerable when dominance must be displayed

for in order to remove the Soviet missiles

from Cuba the American president was willing to assume

what he thought to be

a 50% chance of nuclear exchange, that is,

"holocaust", not that he used the word

At Hiroshima, a man's shadow clings to a wall

. . .

Then the young woman sang. And it was an old, sad song . . .

a song one could sing of the beauties of earth without mention

of earth’s destruction.

. . .

We have seen the people on the road clinging to their rags

the children with their toys

as they flee the war zones

their eyes in photographs so equal to the innocence

of lab animals in their cages

. . .

—We wish for a meaning which will not decay—

throughout each life, throughout each memory

ignoring the void of the unknown, some say:

“what once did exist cannot . . . not have existed”

. . .

How to conceive of the zero without the one?

. . .

Yet at least once born under the crown of solar light,

(and it is not “hell's heat with no light”)

yet once you ride with delight the I/you/all/

yet once within embracing curves of space you spiral

yet once you stand and look at the stars,

“the myriads of other globes”

Yet once you draw breath

yet once you face the mystery of before birth/after death/

(and wrap that enigma in your chosen shibboleth)

Yet once, like a particle in the energy field, like all the rest,

repulsed back or forward pressed,

taken away, then toward—

matter attracting matter

body pulled to body

giving birth

life until it ends as if

never ending

we rush

on

blindly

as the waves

against the rocks