I Perished Beneath Progress

I suffocated beneath a billion plastic shopping bags each barely used but once

I failed to crawl my way out from under tons of rotten half-eaten convenience foods

I was found buried beneath an avalanche of good, reusable cardboard we had tossed aside

The mere idling of their many vehicles proved enough to totally blacken my lungs

I died from a million tiny cuts caused by all the perfectly good glass we had thrown away

I was carried off by the flood of petroleum, mindlessly burned for no real reason

Advertising jingles collided noisily in my head as I tried earnestly to pray for my soul

I was crushed beneath mountains of worthless and dead corporate factory fishery bycatch

I lay flattened and compressed under fresh concrete, right along with the dying soil

They gave myself and other dissidents free housing: next to their coal-fired power plants

I was borne off with rich sediment as the mountain glaciers melted into blowing dust

I drifted up with the smoke from the last firewood burned to boil their drinking water

They brought bad jobs and ruined our lives with their wasted dream vacation resorts

I was scalded horribly before drowning in the spreading floods of their black asphalt

I stood no chance as monstrous yellow machinery pierced and gouged my unprotected flesh

I perished from the shock of all the electricity that was simply being wasted

I was quietly covered by silt far below the surface at the base of their marvelous dams

I passed out, unaware of the hypoxically-poisonous nature of their slick propaganda

I was but one of uncounted millions who perished in the resource wars caused by overpopulation

Their high-speed tires spread me into a shiny stain on the smooth concrete pavement

I was buried with free-market lead in my brain and Clean Coal mercury in my tissues

I failed in my struggle to make it to the air above a sea of cast-off plastic containers

Nobody found my tiny newborn body inside a milk carton in a convenience store dumpster

I passed away beneath the excessive marching feet of the far beyond sustainable

I slowly decomposed along with vast forests of discarded paper we found no use for

Their screaming sonar destroyed my guidance system as we fled, full of industrial toxins

I drowned with a polar bear searching for ice floes long melted in this new warm age

I disappeared from migration routes traced through the web of life for a million years

Drying with the virgal rain, I never reached the parched earth, so very far below

I flowed lifeless along with dirty runoff into channelized rivers to help enlarge ocean dead spots

I withered beside the plants which could not migrate away from the increasing heat

I perished of amnesia after my identity was stolen by some worm-filled spam

Our imports fell apart quickly and lay in useless heaps by their abandoned strip malls

I was sent to Africa with the castoff Chinese clothing even thrift stores could not sell

I was body-bagged as the regrettably-unavoidable collateral damage of inevitable globalization

I thinned to the density of outer space with all the rest of their thoughts and beliefs 

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