As Flies To Wanton Boys Are We To Th' Gods
66 Million years ago
Fireball from the sky hits
Echoing life-planet,
Snuffing almost all in darkness
Mouse like burrowing under the inferno.
1750
People harvested like wheat
Strong men, children and women
Especially women
Packed into sea vessels
To Build America
1854
Holding stinking potatoes they watch as
Ships bulging with grain leave port.
Children’s hunger
Leached their lives,
Imperialism flourishes
1953
We lived in fear.
Sky could light up Incinerating us all.
Duck and cover. Duck and cover.
It was real.
Military industrialism thriving.
1954
They live in fear.
Numbered arms came to supper and talked in accents.
Lives buried by decrees and camps.
The future: unbelievable, unliveable.
It could happen again.
December 2-3, 1984
As they slept, in the night
Creped over town
Phosgene gas, denser than air, close to the ground
Coughing, eye irritation, burning lungs, suffocation.
Union Carbide profited.
9/11, 2001
Towers dedicated to wealth crumble to the streets
3,000 gone in dust.
Opportunity for war
500,000 and more slain abroad
The dominance of oil and hate.
March 11, 2011
Millions of sea tons put boats on roads.
Doomed reactor irradiating the world.
Wait for the effects.
Don’t eat the fish.
Living better electrically.
Now
Phone rings in Gaza.
Get out now!
Run!
Rubble.
Precision bombing.
Gaunt polar bear on the top of the word
Fires scorch earth in the night
Huracanes eat shorelines
And people migrate to find water.
Carbon-wealth legacy.
Soon
Child smelling, picking lilacs
Drinking specks of nectar
Future, hope
Before us.
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