Carnivoricide
by Odin Roark

Oh to stay conscious
Amidst heavy sky
As Nature and man turns on itself.

Air so laden with waste
Bridling the leaf and flower
With faux caresses of duplicity,
Continues delivering putrefaction
Smothered in the Air-Wick of deceit.

Enemies impervious to wakefulness
Focus on the mind's chemical vulnerability
Where within,
Awareness of without,
Succumbs to rainbowed poison
Sheening our waters,
Coating existence to become but dust,
A vanquished life’s erosion,
Time's inevitable vortex of failed reason,
Pretension’s victory,
Rational man’s demise.

Sadly
Our species of reason
Stands stoic atop fantasized castle walls
Peering through deceptive lenses
At fields and oceans below,
Ignorant that a race for superiority
Ultimately succumbs to piranha-infested moats.

How pernicious our abused living
Becoming skeletal throw-away,
Continuing unrealized,
Trumpeting its blindness
Into the growing echo
Of a vacuous Neverland.

When might we learn
Tenacious self-destruction
Becoming nothing but wind blown waste?

Still…

Like a stubborn chessboard,
The we of few
The dwindling sum of tenacious cognizance
Continues to survive,
Even as delusional board pieces
Insist on a lethal game,
Ignorant of Byron's
"Those pagod things of saber sway
With fronts of brass and feet of clay…"

Perhaps…

Even as locust-like gluttony
Threatens its pandemic carnivoricide,
Some of us will remain standing,
Our feet atop Nature’s gift,
Knowing of the many ways to go…
Peering at the darkness wide-awake
Will always be the silent battle cry of valor.