Earth Day Rant in Rhyme
Do not touch your face
Don't forget to say grace
To save ourselves who has
a clue
Of what on Earth to do
Why not stampede for
toilet tissue.
To the main topic here this
is no discontinuity.
And to mark Earth Day's
first half century
Why not consider a bike
build subversity?
Ride sustainability in
perpetuity.
No ransom for royalty will
mine be
Nor lock-it-up pathology
Not Harley or Honda or
Norton Commando
But the lightweight familiar
Low carbon to go.
From random origins re-
integrating
Derailleur, freewheel, bask-
et for freight bearing
Soon very likely it's calling
for riding
And the bell still can ring.
New brakes and cables
The seat looks like torture
But entirely consistent with
enhancing our future.
Sustainable practice in
practice!
Environmental crisis pro-
phylaxis!
0n this rare and sacred
sanctuary
Our esteemed enduring Big
Rock # 3
The lately most salient
reality
Is a pair of close siblings
calling more frequently
Each indisposed to ges-
tires of leniency
Make no mistake their
common ontogeny
Pandemic and climate
change and what other
progeny?
For much higher impact the
twosome synergetic
Now target the inimical my-
opic diathetic
High caution to many con-
ventions endemic.
Who can doubt it, we're to-
day in a crucible
This experience now could
be just dress rehearsal
Will the pandemic itself
take a reversal?
And where does virus def-
inition
Include stasis as condit-
ion?
Among the instruments of
adjustment
A virus is a perfect comple-
ment
For restoring peace on this
firmament
Why choose then, resent-
ment, lamentment ?
For responses judicious
and decent
There is good record of pre-
cedent.
The once familiar "normal"
So easy to invoke
Reinstated, undebated
Means ever more of gag
and choke.
There's formidable arsenal
to provoke.
For some reason lately, a
misunderstanding
Our apprehending needs
expanding
There's inversion of percep-
tion
Demanding honest interro-
gation
Identify contagion, identify
aberration
And which is defence,
which is prosecution?
Homeostasis fits well in the
Earthly equation
Ever useful, effective self
calibration
Consider James Lovelock's
wise surmise
In fact no big surprise
Regarding Gaia he did hy-
pothesize
Planet Earth as living entity
Almost in herself, singular-
ity
Expect then, with alacrity,
tenacity
Prompt response of imm-
unity
To thoughtless societal
effrontery.
Last year, all heard it.
Eleven years remained
For an anthropocene un-
restrained.
A dangerous, too costly im-
balance
Much too long maintained.
The pushing of plastic and
singing ka-ching
As cultural purpose, how
inspiring?
A recipe only for more grief
to bring.
((i)) When arrive the legions
of benevolent alien,
To encamp and pro-
ceed in every nation,
On thorough cam-
paigns of brain trans-
plantation
Any limit to the dream-
scape imagination?
And how deep is the
mind's addiction
To the most outrage-
ous fiction?
But if such good for-
tune ever eventuates,
Please save me a
place
In the first line of can-
didates.
(ii) How did airtravel be-
come so sanctified?
A late cornerstone of
economies.
Fostering capricious
dependencies
Precluded through all
human history
A response now to a
deficiency?
Manifestation of a des-
peration?
Where prosperity sur-
passed creativity and
imagination?
For its now a dose of
banality,
Though once a sensa-
tion,
Converging with a TV
generation,
Deep torpor on the
couch, but poised with
remote,
All have acquaintance
with this anecdote.
Extrapolate to a bizarre
possibility
Slight stretch to the
venerated normalcy
A brief holiday in a re-
mote galaxy
Or ten days on beautiful
Alpha Centauri ?
Equally vacuous, spe-
cious, injudicious
One might choose
Sirius.
IT IS after all ALL
ABOUT US
For US right now it's
no sacrifice
Externalize costs and
roll the dice
Transit a STEAL at
twice the price
Many the options exo-
ticus
For we of a culture ca-
pricious
So be not deterred
All costs are deferred
Simply a shift of depre-
dations
Bequeath it all to future
generations
Promote further the
state of desolation
How keenly felt the
tough privations
By those avoiding such
vacations?
If they're needed to
"save your neck"
Best consider VR tech
Or support your local
holodeck.
(iii)Swat not that mosquito
Do an earthworm res-
cue
They fit this earthscape
better than we do
To be here they have
more right than we do
It's a heavy charge that
in essence
To many would be a big
offence
Any volunteers as coun-
sel for defense?
You find no earthworm
administrations
Of edentate regulations
Do they insist on air con-
ditionations?
How much hope of their
support
For yet another airport?
Or PT lumber for garden
playground or dock
Or the big commute and
more gridlock?
Or would they often con-
cede
That THERE IS a "nox-
ious weed"
With big consensus, all
agreed
Chemical warfare will
meet our need.
How bad is earthworm
halitosis
From digital world
hypnosis
Their own boredom and
desperation
For just flash and dazzle
stimulation
Or expressing that a life
well spent
Is a craze of commit-
ment to synthetic scent?
There is indeed much
malodorum
Why not slag the real
odium?
For us of current edition
humanity
Knowing the factor
Of tumorgenic or hor-
mine disruptor
Elicits "Why on earth
would that matter ?"
Earth Day EVERY day, all
must insist
A denial of futures if the
choice is resist
A tragedy is no inevitability
All can be worthy of Rock#
Three
We're all of the same
waters
From the primal asteroid
showers.