Do we use the world?
Is it exploitation?
I wonder if we have this right,
For simply having the means,
When you tear down a rainforest,
Do you feel like you’re bettering the world?
When you spray chemicals in a rabbits eye,
Do you feel beautiful?
When you wrench the ivory from a dying rhino,
Do you feel homely?
When you dispatch a lion from a kilometre away,
Do you feel like a man?
When you destroy the world,
When you choke the life from her,
Does it make you feel human?
Because it should.
Look here and see,
A fine exemplar of humanity,
My form built on spent casings and pollcards,
There is a hole in my heart,
I dare to say it can’t be filled,
I do my part in the consumption,
My right hand here holds fossils and blood diamonds,
Funds for the campaign,
My left still gripping the throat of nature,
Giving toasts to the gurgling,
It may be crass to say,
We were born to rule,
Or so we gaslight ourselves,
Sitting on thrones of pork and beef,
With cruor and tallow on our lips,
It’s dirty work being human,
But taxes have to be paid,
So here I march on,
Boots leaving bloody tracks in the snow,
As a fine exemplar of humanity.
In the heart of sylphic woods,
In glades no man has ventured,
Does a lady of the green reside,
Behind an oaken mask she hides,
Confining an ethereal and virgin face,
Her hair is a canopy all its own,
Viridian and amber and verdant,
Cloaked in the very same foliage she loves,
A moss ball gown,
And this forest is her masked gala,
Here she speaks to deer and tree both,
Listening to their aches and pains,
And tending to their woodland souls,
She’s a warden in this jade locale,
A motherly figure,
And one this natural world adores in return.
I once met a being of glamour,
Fresh from the shores of Arcadia,
A sylvan lady,
Slender and refined in stature,
Cloaked in every form of botany,
Beautiful yet somewhat off,
Verging upon androgyny,
Her hair was overgrown ivy,
And her eyes were frosted alabaster,
Her gaze felt ever like barely stifled fury,
A mother bears spirit married to the fae,
Natures proud hostility held fast in her voice,
The elements danced like sprites upon her silver tongue,
And from that tongue came a harsh attitude,
To her kind,
The human world was profane,
An aberration,
We are pollution given a body,
The antithesis of her creed,
It was difficult to argue,
So I gave myself to the green.
A thunderstorm is a play,
Did you know that?
Those bolts of plasma that soar earthbound,
They’re actors to be perceived,
This storms dramatis personae,
The lights in the sky,
And encroaching rumbles,
They signal the curtains resonant opening,
To an applause from the very clouds,
A million little diamonds rushing down,
The bolts immediately commence their dance,
Spiralling and arcing and coalescing downwards,
Lighting up even the darkest night,
Mother Nature sends these dramas to us,
As equal parts frolic and show of force.
I remember seeing that wasteland,
A desert spied through weary eyes,
A corpse of an environment,
Rotten and cracked,
Populated by the spectre of an ecosystem,
A dead land,
Auburn and drab in its last throes,
And it brought a tear to my eye,
Then that ash sapling grew,
And as this green warden germinated,
It was like time had been reversed,
The land came alive once more,
Greenery and vines returned to the loam,
Viridian spread through the veins of the dirt,
This magic came about from a single ash,
And it brought a tear to my eye.
There is tell of a fallen angel,
Feathers replaced with horns,
Some epitome of spite,
And of this we are taught to fear,
Lauded as some ultimate enemy,
But I say different,
The devil is an amateur,
Way out of his infernal depth,
Ultimate evil sits in coffee shops and sips lattes,
A creature as studious as it is destructive,
Whose ingenuity has moulded countless systems of abuse,
It chokes the land not in lies but toxic waste,
The devil should just retire,
Last I checked we wore serpent skins,
Extinction is just in a days work,
Even Lucifer ought fear the mailed fist of man,
Both in location and scale of evil,
Humanity is punching down.
I waltzed upon a woodland path,
To release some serotonin,
To be one with the natural backdrop,
Between the crowds of bark giants,
I chanced upon a wonderful sight,
I had been granted an audience,
A once in a lifetime opportunity,
To meet the duke of this wood,
A regal beast of wild aristocracy,
A titanic stag of primeval physique,
Towering over even the treetops,
His antlers scratched sermons into the clouds,
Treatises on woodland matters,
He stood upon ivory legs commanding respect,
Purely demanding reverence from all,
He stared into my urban soul,
As if in pity,
I could only bow,
A newfound awe crosses my mind,
A lord of nature has blessed me,
With a new heart of dew,
Pulsing with vitality.
As fools we spite the land,
Cutting into her flesh with drill and scalpel,
Rubbing salt in the wounds,
A different kind of salted earth,
Her very flesh stolen as ore,
Her own blood wielded as torture,
A stinging iron maiden,
We rub it in,
Taking gifts with clawed hands,
Plundering and pillaging,
Diamonds and salt and gold,
We laugh all the way to the bank,
But we’ll be the fools,
Our own doomsayers,
As salted earth,
Becomes scorched earth.
The Earth strives to heal,
From the corruption of warfare,
Still wounded decades later,
Still polluted by the arsenic of empires,
From the minds of old men,
Did these scars across the land come,
Painted by bone shards and blood of the young,
Spread by the quills of artillery and lead,
Many souls died here,
Laid to rest in craters,
Mother Nature lies beside them in solidarity,
Mourning for the industrial slaughter,
And the planet still weeps,
Those tears of acid rain,
She hates those old men,
And endeavours to right their wrongs.
WorldofHarley 