June, 2020 – Hell in a Handbasket - 6. Part Six: Curtains of Dust

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Part Six: Curtains of Dust

But Where Will We Live… II

XXXIII.

From east to west come desert sand,

For wild weather’s the norm new

Driving out all mild temperance

And wishing this were a snafu.

Situation normal’s all fucked up,

Replaced with Saharan sand storms

Choking Florida and Georgia,

Burning throats and eyes in swarms…

It’s just what COVID-19 folks,

What with their respiratory health

More precarious than ever, need;

To have aerosolized sandpaper

To rasp and grate and shred their lungs

In times as turbulent as these.

I have lived through such dire attacks

For above Tokyo one fine year

Blew toxic clouds of silica

Raised from the dunes of the Gobi.

Awful, searing burn in the nose

Settled down-throat into the lungs,

Inviting respiration to

Feel like gargling with glass.

I wheezed and wheezed for weeks after,

And now the American South

Feels Gobi’s African cousin.

But still people will vote for the

“Global Warming is Fake News!” Gops?

Lord help their kids, who’ll have to bear

The brunt of their parents’ evil

‘The future does not matter’ selfishness.

Situation normal’s all fucked up,

Replaced with Saharan sand storms

Choking Florida and Georgia,

Burning throats and eyes in swarms.

From east to west come desert sand,

For wild weather’s the norm new

Driving out all mild temperance

And wishing this were a snafu….

XXXIV.

And we thought the Scopes Monkey trial

Pitted reason against foolishness –

Science against crackpot ‘belief’ –

When we learned all about it in school.

So how could we have de-evolved

From a country of progress and hope –

From a nation laughing at morons –

To inbred, ‘Deliverance’ zealots?

Simple – Pat Robinson’s whisper

Into Nixon’s too-distracted ear

Led to shameless Gop pandering;

Just to get the degenerate-vote.

Decades later, and here we are:

Faith’s a placebo, the fourth monkey

In a blue-suit, red-tie wearing

Line of those who refuse to do good.

The see no good; the hear no good;

The never speak a wholesome word perverts –

Genetically depraved mutants –

Hell-bound for the evil they have done.

For the last-to-follow monkey,

The fourth Franken-Simian’s the worst;

He sits on a glut of self-praise

As guardian idol to DO no good.

So now we ask how we de-evolved

From a country of progress and hope –

From a nation laughing at morons –

To inbred, ‘Deliverance’ zealots?

And we thought the Scopes Monkey trial

Pitted reason against foolishness –

Science against crackpot ‘belief’ –

When we learned all about it in school.

XXXV.

Science swelters under the heat lamp of

avoidance

willful disbelief's

selfish disregard

It leaves the rest of us parched to the bone

broiled in ignorance

de-fleshed by politics'

selfish disregard

XXXVI.

These days and weeks go by alone

And I feel I can’t get any fresh air;

The freeway noise never lessens

As I know I can’t get any fresh air.

Perhaps the virus is in me

At the level of each cell strangling

Oxygenation’s needed path

As the lifeforce of each cell is strug'ling.

Worse yet, I can't afford water

That costs 100% more these days

Than a few mere years in the past;

Which costs 100% more these days.

Baby-boomers refused to tax

Themselves to pay for the system’s upkeep,

Preferring offshore tax shelters

While our American cities crumbled.

And so, I thirst; can’t get enough

Water to save the cell structures I need;

From Covid and Conservatives,

There’s no water to save the structures we need.

XXXVII.

And to think —

The proverbial glass of water used to be

Free in this country, while now, working

Men and women this June can’t even afford

To buy what’s on tap.

XXXVIII.

It seems the Powers-that-Be proliferated

All the poisoned waters now contaminated

From Flint, Michigan, to Russian arctic oil spill –

Every drop once fit to drink, now dosed to kill.

Evidence the benzine flames from deep-shale fracking

North American tap water is not lacking;

Or massive dams designed to drown all trace of life

On continents where Water Wars erupt in strife.

We can only cover parched mouth and nose and ask,

Strug'ling against the grown discomfort of our mask,

Who from behind this curtain of dust pulls the strings

That famine, pandemic and blood-red chaos brings?

Yet, we know the answer before our hand can draw

The screen aside to expose who breaks Nature’s law –

Those out to make money; those few who will profit

And damn our eco-souls to the very last bit.

XXXIX.

The toxicology of H₂O,

The spray poisons on crops,

The DDT on human flesh…

Is it any wonder Pollyanna journalistic

Practices swept under the rug the inconveniently

(Boring) fact of a worldwide insect collapse?

A theme they thought a joke – “What’s a few

Bugs, anyway? Ha-Ha” – and one that wouldn’t

Sell ad space is fine to ignore; but now, it’s coming home, too late.

Only this year have news outlets reported the scientific

fact – 50% of Earth’s bug biodiversity is gone, already. Gone.

Dead. Never to recover; an event larger than any dino die-off.

Anyone who can look at that and think “So

What,” I’ll tell you, you are part of the problem. The food

Domino Effect is well underway, whether you care or not.

Half insect populations mean, lizard, reptile, fish,

Birds dying in droves; the things that eat them

As well, and up and up until the only ‘meat’

You and I will have to eat will be human.

Is that headline so funny? Is that prospect

A “So what?” for your kids and grandkids?

XL.

Anger, Anger, Anger –

our world’s lost,

set afloat

on a river

of Anger.

XLI.

Many years ago

I headed a poem

“I sigh and wonder why.”

Today, near the threshold

Of a July that seems doomed,

Even before its first sunrise,

“I sigh and wonder why”

For a different reason:

One of Tipping Points and inaction.

I had to look it up, for I could hardly believe it:

Al Gore’s movie declaring a climate emergency

Came out in 2006; or, some 14 years ago.

And what has happened in all that time we’ve allowed to pass?

Faith-based ecology grounded on belief-based ‘science,’

For so far over the rational tipping point we have gone,

That not even empiric measure can escape the mire

Privately-funded politics have quick-san'd the human race.

In our hubris, we’ve forced the Earth herself to find an answer –

And though she cries pointed tears about it, her one weapon

Is poised above every human neck in the here and now –

A major extinction is her only way to survive

And she will do something before it’s too late, unlike us,

And she’ll draw a little comfort to know we’re sent to sleep

Dull and doped by the narcotic of our 'faith' and 'belief.'

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