Time Will Spend Us
Published in The Poet’s Haven Digest Anthology, Strange Land
and in The Blue Nib Literary Magazine, December 2018
poetry
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Time will spend us
Like sands infinitely tiny and forever
Scooped up, held sweaty in fist
Blowing, rolling, grinding down ever towards the earth,
the sea
the forgetful waves

Time will spend us
Like decrepit fingers clutching at the clay
Slumbering, waking, roots shooting forth
Green swaths sparkle, over harvested, logged, dwindling when viewed from satellites
from planes
from drones

Time will spend us
Like vivid colors drifting, swirling in our oceans
Spilling forth from stomachs of animals
Who nurture, who speak, who remember where to give birth
where to gather
where to die

Time will spend us
Like drinking water unprotected from
Corporations who are people they say
With invisible chemicals, with wicked greed, with bottom lines to protect in court
in print
in commercials

Time will spend us
Like amnesiacs who named flowers weeds
Confused religion for facts
Forgetting our history, forgetting our past, forgetting science is about correcting flaws
about admitting mistakes
about human discovery

Time will spend us
Like pits of waste reeking of run off and protein consumption and ballooning populations
Pumped full of steroids, antibiotics for masses
Saturated with antidepressants, alcohol, and frenzied calendars wondering what to eat
wondering where to seek relief
wondering about moderate to severe illness

Time will spend us
Like we spent it, in fear, in corrupt blindness, in thick denial
That Proxima Centauri or any other remote star holds our truth
Another earth to be raped, to be pillaged, to be ruined in ignorance
in exchange for entertainment
in a bargain for convenience

Time will spend us and
the earth will devour us, exhaust us, and reduce us to our smallest parts
cosmic dust shifting about mingling with background radiation
until democracy is a memory, until cooperation is an afterthought
until we are weak
until we are broken
until our stories are forgotten
until science is story
until the enlightenment is myth
until myth is truth
until no one even recalls quarks and leptons
until the carbon cycle is ridiculed as lies
until the air dancing and skimming across the land is magic
until we are at the mercy of ourselves once more
until we concede to men who ordain and declare
until we are undoubting that we are the center of the universe
until we are digging up ancient architecture, battling each other, raising walls, and amassing weapons.
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