Corpses and Corpses

--I wrote the following in New Orleans, surrounded by what I saw, and still see, as a general apathy of 'the general public' towards the destruction of people, peoples and the environment.  The numbness and motivation towards all three I feel are entwined and inseparable.  The opening quote is meant not as a means of identifying with the deity, but rather to acknowledge that if there are limits that exist within the human consciousness and ability to discern what would truly be healthy & sustainable, for an individual, for a culture or for a species, that this limit could, in this instance, very well be termed God.
Corpses and Corpses
"And if despite this you do not heed Me and you come in encounter
against Me, I will come against you in wrathful encounter and I on My
part will chastise you sevenfold for your offenses. And you shall eat
the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat.
And I will destroy your cult-places and cut off your incense stands,
and I will put your corpses on top of the corpses of your fetishes and
I will loathe you."
~Leviticus 26:26

How else do clocks keep time these days?
A shade of obsidian dropped over black silk,
with a car and a half for every soul here
the stratosphere is asking, "Why do you hate me?"
The icebergs are asking, "What wrong did we do?"
And we, the full time citizenry,
hop planes to discover the new inside us,
and back-up files to a second drive.
The math has been worked out
and grass will outlive us.

Meanwhile the dams provide the water to keep
the lights in casinos running and the rice villagers
underwater.
Our breath clogged from junk
still has a little room to breathe.
Six of the morning skies will still bless us,
after that, the seventh will loathe us.
A sky not sky emptying its contempt on us.
A desert growing larger each afternoon.
A swamp that shone like four beads of sweat
on Brahma's brow, dumping its millennial silt into the sea.

Are not half the world's things enough?

The children playing in the sand
are playing with guns and people's heads.
The elders spoon another tin
of cat food to get them to their next fix.
The derelict who speaks to himself,
had no choice
and has none now.
The smart sit unsurprised
and wrap themselves in kimonos and red wine.

We only see our reflection
as it bounces back towards us,
imagination travels sideways
wearing a green coat
only the quiet can hear.

To get the texture of it, hold soil in your hand
as you move a plant to a larger pot.
Rinse basmati with your fingers
and watch the starch cloud
swirl down the sink.

To gaze into the cells of prisons
is to be reminded of the darkness of humans,
like a tour of Auschwitz that never ends
and never ends.
A sheet over a detainee's head,
is an inescapable ten pound halo
screwed into each of our skulls.

                                               We never ask if we can lessen
the load of our fellow travelers.
                                                         Only rarely
our hands outward to catch a fellow citizen.

One day I went with Atilio to the scrap yard
to add piles to the pile for beer.
What I saw there shook something loose.
A hundred foot high pile of ready-to-be-shredded
human dreams. Machines doing the slaving,
and four people saying we weren't adding junk
to the junk correctly. This is not metaphor.
This is watching money chew through bone.
This is watching machines drink pints of blood.

The bit that was left over from that scrap run,
enough to pan into six flakes for booze,
knowing the heavens over our head ready
and the storm just off the coast.

A little smile, a little music, while the fire
eats human limbs two handed.
An embrace we hold against the rising waters.