Nature isn't Disney
No wild animals die of old age
They die of hunger, exposure, illness
Parasitism, injury and predation
The first five manners of death
All lead to death by predation
As the animal becomes too weak
To defend itself
Predation means
They are torn asunder
While conscious and aware
Of what is happening.
Compared to their fate
The hunter's shot is quick and merciful
Given good game chances
Every animal taken by a hunter
Is one that avoids the horror
Of being eaten alive after
Suffering immense hardship.
It creeps over beer stained carpets.
Last night I saw its hunchbacked shadow
rooting in the fridge for spreading cheese.
This morning it peers out of my front window,
looking to see if anything has changed -
nothing has.
I know it will be up all night
shaking an unlit Christmas tree,
it will moan. It imagines
rearranging my leftover life
for another year.
For Trumpians
our multiculturally celebrated Golden Rule
applies first to Ego
then to immediate white privileged family,
then to wealthier gated community,
then to a more rabblous Republican Party,
then to USA nationalists
European predative culture idolaters
mistaking capital-inspired Manifest Destiny
for sacred DNA theology,
then to fallen Earth,
if there is any gold left over
after all that strained dispassion,
divestment fatigue
stretching out from entitled EgoCenters.
For Green Party contemplatives,
the Democratic Golden Rule
is first celebrated with,
then applied to, planet Earth,
then all Her sacred EarthTribes,
then to humanity, alive,
dead,
and yet to arrive,
then to cooperatively co-invested local community,
then to extended family,
then to nuclear family,
then interdependent Ego,
should there by any radically inclusive Golden Rule energy
left deductive
and right inductive
to regeneratively,
win/win bicamerally, share.
Predation In Woeful Times
By Roy Merritt
Life is getting ghastly now
For few it seems sublime
Everyone engrossed with thoughts
Of predation in woeful times
In times like this trust for neighbors
Is a luxury you can’t define
You can’t depend on anybody
With predation in woeful times
Who knows if some day soon
Some day just down the line
We’re all at each others throats
With predation in woeful times
Will we turn to cannibalism
The ugliest of human crimes
Soon enough enslave each other
With predation in woeful times
Might we lose our beating hearts
Like some wretched thing in slime
Will we turn into grotesque beasts
With predation in woeful times
Will we revert to when this earth
First fostered our tenuous kind
Will we divorce from Darwinism
With predation in woeful times
Will we blow up this planet
Are we thus far inclined
Perhaps we deserve all this
Predation in woeful times
Might it be we deserve all this
Predation in woeful times
There was no clear move.
Flamethrowers were on the way-
and I was looking,
backward.
A fragile truce with the
clouds. They had abandoned-
the sky and were wringing-
the neck of mountains.
Compromising with the painted lips
of winter, my secret was out.
I was shivering in the crowd
of moon-gazers.
Satish Verma
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