top of page

Clean World

Barren are the forests they once roamed

their foliage denuded, giants felled

once where branches spread their matted chests

today only lonesome clearings remain

their baldness covered in silver spider mist

 

Days waken now to distant buzz of saws

retreating armies of insistent wasps

motors protesting between metallic coughs

the last surviving monsters topple and are still

 

Quarries have eaten into hills

armies of caterpillars have devoured the green

overnight masked surgeons have shoveled yellow dust

into trucks and trailers purloined from sap and ore

 

All this they said to prolong expectancy of life

in steel and glass caverns underground

where sterile beings might shelter from pollution

and ultraviolet malignancy cannot reach

 

There they now huddle, exhausted cannibals

and listen to the music of Mozart and Mendelssohn

who died at thirty in some unprotected loft

while plague and pox lurked unwashed streets

 

They sing their hymns, alternating their praise

to dynasties of insecticide and dung

To Go Back To
SEARCH RESULTS
Hit your browser's
BACK BUTTON

© Johnmichael Simon

2014

.

bottom of page