The UN Warns Of Millions Of Extinctions
Earth day 1970, a thought hatched from an idea egg:
Earth has value. It is pretty. It allows life.
But, a solid gold toilet, grabby greed, appeared
The idea of sharing was flushed away
And the idea that “rich is better!”
Spread like disco, junk food, and chaos
Until political corruption sprawled even faster
Some fled to the mountains, but birds fell
From skies like broken dreams
Then, sea turtles drowned in fishing nets
and droughts surged refugees from global south
to a sweating, fretting, global north
Meanwhile, populists stood on the toilet, proclaiming:
“You were cheated. You need gold toilets, too!”
They sold barricades, cages, and razor-wired hearts
That beat in tune to ragtime minstrel shows
And uneasy hatred frothed on shores like oil spills
Amid heat waves that melted truth, and floods that
drowned all innocence, fighting erupted like blistering confusion
But still the birds, fish, beasts, butterflies and bees faded
Although it does promise to persist, that plastic spoon
in your mourning mouth, isn’t silver, much less gold
And the beasts that build beauty, and the grasses that sing sense,
And the elephants that exalt glory, and the fresh forests that quench thirst,
And the mountains that extol magnificence, and the butterflies that float hope, And the pride your heart aches for, and the belonging you’ve forgotten,
May return when our true values do, perhaps from an egg,
fragile, cracking open like old wounds, to reveal comprehension
