yes. and you?

the stone mothers stand
with folded arms.
they are wrapped in wisps of smoke
billowing as skirts
around them.

the fathers
are fire. they consume the children. their screams
are open mouthed caverns of silence
echoing into the dawn. do you hear this?
do you see the opals of their eyes
nestling together in the ashes?

the hawk is awake
but she busies herself
finding breakfast. she floats
above the milky smoke
curling like silken strands
of baby fine hair around pearl white
ears. the sunrise is a blush
above sharp indigo hills
and a river entangled in mist.
there is safety
in their distance, in their keeping
to their own concerns.

you might do that too,
so you just won’t see. your dawn is outshone
by the bluish glow within the glassy frames
enthroned at the ends of your beds--
that space where flat faces smirk above alabaster teeth and
dictate stories in a sleepy drone
punctuated by simulacrums of honest emotion,
like vocal punctuation marks cueing you into moments of caring.
awwww, maybe. or, owwwwww.
and you are distracted, efficiently insulated
from the sharp sided human madness
happening simultaneously right here.
yes, right here. there are

frail things crushed beneath the massive treads
of our great vehicles as we speed away into illusions
of magnificent busy purpose. there are broken children
just 25 feet away, women bruised and apathetic,
men defeated into explosions of deadly impotence.
there are lives imploding all around us
in waves that do not reach the national
signals. do they deserve invisibility?
probably not but apparently, sometimes, yes. the powerlessness
of invisibility. the invisibility
of powerlessness. they are still here anyway,
even if we don’t see. our neighbors.
still here. right here. not just way over there. no.

and so what
responsibility must you take for this, this
disaster of humans murdering every sacred thing
and not even eating
the remains? what is
your response?

because the world is blood scented. can’t you smell it? of course not.
but she is. like a slaughterhouse.
she is drenched, she is saturated, and yet
she keeps drinking it in. what choice does she have,
this earth, but to submit? what choice?
she is bound
beneath us and our great busy plans,
our beautiful preoccupations,
our stinking chemicals, our splendid
metal chariots, our portfolio of investments,
and yes, our fragile glassy dreams.
because that is the truth of it,
that is what the outline of the bones
lying just below the surface
of our vanity
tells us :

that all that is wild,
and all that is innocent,
is bound
and gagged
beneath us.