In the attic of my brain
Christopher Hitchens argues
with a non-infidel,
unwrapping another pack
to cloud the world,
sloshing scotch or gin
to drown the many losses
where words cannot vanquish.

A mother buckles in her child
in ravaged Louisiana,
where crude blights water and sand,
and she cannot say
this is yours: the stains.
No one owns these disasters;
she is a slave, as is her child,
to decisions of inaction,
to greed, profit, and carelessness.

A governor goes to Washington,
a plea in his hand
for more bailout money,
though he voted against it,
and our debt climbs.
His son died in Iraq,
but he is proud,
victory is loss,
inner poverty is inevitable.

An astronaut resigns himself
to never see the moon.
He wonders if Mars is cheap talk,
wonders if our best days are behind us,
thinks he will teach,
but teach them what?
Scientists leave this country
after graduating,
the cutting edge is Asia
and so he sits at his computer
awash in memories.

Counting his luck, a whale leaps, crashes
undersea and spots it:
a dark island in the Pacific,
a continent of plastic debris.
He sees he the millions trapped and thrashing.
So many given up;
they die in vain.
We never see such horror as the Sirenias do.
If all that flotsam were heaped on land,
could we see them tangled into suffering?

Sharks are hacked alive for fin soup, but
is it even worse on land?
Another keratin rich animal is mutilated,
Is there enough outrage to stop it?
Might we do something about it?

A child in the Congo is given an assault rifle.
He is told to kill another child,
beaten if he does not comply.
They shoot heroin into his veins.
He kills and kills again and laughs,
for isn’t it all mad?
Lifelines of another endless war: gold.
While fearful Americans buy another ounce
or a thousand because
someone might confiscate their guns.

A young man in China locks up his corner office,
another fortune making day,
beating the capitalists at their own game.
He pauses, breathes in the house, the cars,
the dream of inexhaustible resources,
ignoring the factories of burns
where slaves earn pennies,
imagining a better life like he.
All promises are broken.

A German banker closes his vault
wondering of Greece and Italy
and how long the currency can hold
when everyone is betting
on negatives more than tangibles.

Insurance is fraud;
those with capital are dupes,
and on the game goes
because they’re the smart ones,
those Streeters lie about and rape others’ security,
who have no millions in bonuses,
no millions stashed away,
and the financial predators,
who play with our money,
roam free to crash the economy to death
again and again for their own gain.

And I have to wonder
What is it we need?
What price is want over need?

What happened to universal consciousness,
so all large-scale problems might be solved,
including climate change?

The planet, anesthetized,
by pain overload,
seeks balance,
lifting her arm to us,
she nail scraping a cliff,
but we don’t reach down;
we let her drop;
we destroy her every second
because we think it’s ours to exploit.

Even our little ones
abuse the peons as if it were their right.
They burn ants to watch them suffer,
Salt snails just to watch them
bubble up and die.
We are their teachers,
not what we say, but do,
with hunting,
standing by doing naught
when we see attacks in the street,
and stepping on others
to make more money, joy of many.
So much killing.

We think we see everything,
but some would argue--we see nothing.

Nothing--until we choose to act.

Or we just may become the endangered species.