POEM: NEWS OF THE WORLD # 6

HOMO SAPIENS DISCOVERED!

in an arctic, un-recovered.

Orphaned, no longer mothered.

Leaving behind bones and methane gas.

Meanwhile, it’s the bling-bling

that pays for little Ling-Ling,
to come here and sing-sing

about her life after the flood.

Say, have you noticed our children grow feral?

"It’s those bone grafts with sick, septic marrows

cultured inside of fat sparrows

by black-ops in stationary orbit!"

And were those tanks or a carnival ride?

On TV he chokes on his pride.

By shotgun she marries her bride.

Tongues clucked at the one and all.

Our government will save troubled lands.

Our government will stop blowing sands.

Our government will take by the hand

this childish world that we live in.

For today is a most modern age,

where laptops make all a sage;

where preaching is all the rage,

especially our exit strategy.

But in forests where all is cut loose

we’ve killed the proverbial goose,

placing that antique noose

jauntily over our heads.

For of late seen loosening her belt,

with indigestion quite rightly felt,

just as the last of the ice does melt,

our world is feeling quite full.

With burping and farting volcanoes,

our homes, our tectonic cradles,

become fiery hot potatoes

in places distinctly not Oz.

So, with real estate written off as doom,

and stock markets in perpetual gloom,

that old witch with her bent wicker broom

seems the better magic now.

And along with her ointments and herbs,

her secret berries and freshest of turds,

she’ll ply us with the kindest of words—

she’ll give us all of our reasons.

Thus—steady-on!—it’s human we’ll go.

Only now is about all that we'll know.

And what’s right or what’s right just for show

will be displayed in the coming new seasons.

THIS IS A MORE MEAT AND POTATOES NoW POEM, WITH some straight up poking-the-bear-with-a-stick commentary that I find gets to the point of environmental destruction and degradation of biomes across our planet. All the usual suspects are there: ignorance, willful indifference, waiting for some saviour to come along, waiting for the other shoe to drop....

I’m reading an excellent book, War, by Canadian writer and columnist, Gywnne Dyer, and he comments that, “human populations will always grow up to the carrying capacity of the environment and beyond. And later he says, “human beings are no better at conserving their environment and preserving their long term food supply than any other animal.” He qualifies his first statement by adding,

"[That] human populations prior to modern times always tended to grow unless checked by some outside force like famine or violence, cannot be absolutely proved one way or the other, but it has the ring of truth. We certainly do not know of any pre-modern human group that succeeded in halting population growth over the long term by voluntary measures, nor do we have many examples of such restraint among other animal species, many of which go through regular cycles of population boom followed by population crash."

He suggests that human migrations to the four corners of the world have more to do with overwhelming the carrying capacities of local habitats, and moving on by necessity to greener pastures, than with any innate need to explore. (Dammit! I just bought a pith helmet on eBay!) We use it up, then move on in a seemingly endless cycle of not learning that lesson about peeing in our own pool because, frankly, we don’t have to; because there’s always some new place just over the hill, and because we're so damn adaptable. And this poem comes across as being plain fed up with the whole lot of us.  
Hey! Is that a free buffet over there? Might as well load up my plate like a good little primate! What the heck…
Cheers

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