What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire Page #2

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I have walked that path, unaware of my own

blg feet, enacting the stories of our culture,

not stopping long enough to feel

the instability of the slope underfoot.

But in the late 80s, news of the ozone

hole and global warming first hit me,

and the ground began to shake.

I stopped and looked

around me for the first time.

I got scared. I got involved.

And then the shaking subsided.

Or rather, I just got used to it.

Life got more complex with the births of my three

children. And there was climbing still to do.

So I continued to climb.

But the tremors were still there, underfoot.

At night I slept, but fitfully, clenched with worries,

my dreams assaulted by

vague rumblings from the future.

In my dreams, I would stand at the

pinnacle of the present, and look

out over the surrounding terrain.

And it didn't look like I had thought it would. . .

A faint howling in the distance pierces the night

The monsters we have created

Lumbering to rampant life

Are heading even now toward our village

Nuclear weapons

Building their time

Itching with purposes unfulfilled

As hopeful fingers tremble near buttons

Bunker Busters and Tactical nukes

Suitcase bombs and terrorist acts

Power plant accidents and leaking wastes

Plutonium launched into space

In rockets known to explode

And depleted uranium poisoning the battlefield

Depopulating the land

Chemical warheads

And biological black magicks

Sarin and Soman and VX and phosgene

Anthrax and smallpox and plague

Enough to take out entire cities

Enough to cover the planet

And they don't care who lets them out

As long as they get to play

Others nasties lurch toward us on their own

Old friends, new creations and recent escapees

Ebola, Marburg, Lassa and SARS

Swine Flu, Bird Flu, HIV and AIDS

The rebound of tuberculosis,

Cholera, malaria, and typhus

Prions and mad cows

Scrapie sheep and chronic wasting disease

Cancers that eat away our lungs our brains

Our breasts our testlcles and our ovaries

And new monsters peer over the horizon

Good intentions spliced to

Blind arrogance and numbing greed

Frankenfoods and Terminator seeds

Herbicide tolerant and pesticide laced crops

Patented Life

Barely tested, quietly ticking. . .

Let loose upon the land

As if their creators, having looked at the world,

Managed to learn nothing at all

The monsters howls grow frenzied

Chemicals in our land our sky our rain

Our rivers our food our bodies our babies

Rising male infertility rates and

Superfund sites and ozone depletion

Rivers dammed and salmon doomed

Topsoil loss and fertilizer run-off

Huge oceanic dead zones

And depleted fisheries

And the ghosts of silent whales

Scraping over the corpses of coral reefs

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