Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Fumbling Along, Accidentally Shattering

Honestly, all I did was pick it up for the first time and it just fell apart in my hands
It was not our objective to turn rivers into filthy, stinking, channelized dead zones
I tripped over it and then watched as it split into a million razor-pointed shards
Our plan did not specify that we would convert life-giving rain into poisonous runoff

I never saw that other car approaching as I texted while turning left, reaching for my coffee
We did not mean to gash the landscape and ruin the air to provide power for happy families
I forced its mechanism until something snapped and then I slowly picked up the instruction sheet
Their collateral suffering was not detailed in our larger strategy for their democratic liberation

With a choice of assembling it one way of 2 ways, as always I did it incorrectly the first 2 times
Our efforts to grow our food were not meant to unwind the surrounding ecosystem
I don’t remember what I was grasping for when I spilled the coffee that ruined the rug
It was never intended that our war for their freedom would fracture their society

Afterwards it was easy to see how stupid it was to leave it sitting there, right in the way
Trying to foster economic growth we unwittingly destroyed the natural systems that supported it
I bet on a long shot without thinking much and quickly lost far more than I could afford
When the logging and mining was done there were suddenly neither jobs nor tourists

I was backing out when I felt a muffled crunch and heard a splitting sound behind me
We assumed a trillion independent selfish decisions would blindly optimize our futures
I reached out for something else and this fell, broken into a thousand pieces, on the floor
We never realized how really cheap oil was until we were suddenly paralyzed by its price

I was just trying to keep us happy but our family emissions helped end a biological era
We never thought real estate would tumble as we packaged up all those bad loans
It accidentally shattered as we turned the corner and struck it against the wall
We never intended to create this endless sterile, unimaginative and alienating environment

Trying to steady the nail with one hand, I beat my finger black and blue with the hammer
Well, obviously we could not have foreseen a climate change induced agricultural collapse
In my hurry I tried to carry too much at once and then cleaned up for many hours afterwards
The objectives of our corporate hog farms did not include poisoning human drinking water

Standing up, I lacerated my forehead one more time on that darn overhanging shelf
We could not foresee their local development decisions that fostered regional ecological collapse
The wrench slipped again and I gashed my knuckle which then filled with filthy grease
The roads we built to speed up traffic quickly cloned into snarled and decaying suburbs

Walking in the dark, I broke my wrist before I even knew I had slipped on unseen black ice
Pesticides saved the crops but got into the water and poisoned our mothers and children
I did not realize you stood behind us as I joked loudly about your many shortcomings
We never meant to ruin the economy by destroying the only environment that made it possible, at all

No comments:

Post a Comment