Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1. May 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
I Run Amok
and Shoot…
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| Image courtesy: livescience.com |
For my mean greed do I exploit science and technology
And help lightening like wool the subject of zoology.
I eat and eat, drink and drink, consume and consume
Blind to the harmful effects on many a bloom.
Every inch of earth, every tree and animal do I loot
Not caring that soil, water, air, and minds too I pollute.
Electricity if fails, I am shocked;
When live, trees into stumps by it are hacked.
For my rapacious farming and housing, I invade the forests
Driving the simian species away from their havens of rest;
Seeing them migrate to our habitations in city and town
I chase them away or ill-treat with an unkind
and selfish frown.
With sand mining I kill the riparian flow;
With land-mining gory I smother the life’s glow.
I am man the supreme. To my
credit inventions galore –
Cigarettes, cell phones, air conditioners, plastics, motor cars
Guns, bombs, pesticides, and aerosols, many more, and much more
Killing by asthma, cancer, birth defects,
miscarriage, or wars.
From dodo to rhino, tiger, elephant, lion and sparrow
I run amok and shoot anything dead in glee with my arrow
And itch restless to freely peel away their skin, or pluck away
Their horns and claws, tusks and teeth, and
plumes for money to flow my way.
‘You’re cutting off the very
bough of the tree on which you sit;
Driving a hole in the boat you sail, death only
you visit;
You’re snapping all the fine links of your very
cycle of life!’ –
A far off, feeble, forewarning voice I hear from some gloom.
Who is anyway going to care these grave
prophets of doom?!