Passing the buck
When their homes go up in flames
the great trees toppling like dying giants
and the creatures incinerate en masse
it’s all someone else’s fault.
Not me! Not mine!
When the cities and shanty towns
sink in rising seas or raging floods
and the stray dog, the survivor child
huddle together under a shredded tarp:
the remote firing, via drone or missile
on civilian populations
with nowhere to go
by comfortable men with coffee mug
to hand, and when they clock off,
a meal and bed.
It’s all orders. Ends, justifying.
They could be anyone: you or me.
When they blast holes in the ionosphere
or the sacred skin of Earth
to dredge or drain it’s lifesblood;
the toxic waste of our cleverness
buried in rock or space
and using melting ‘bergs
for lucrative tourist trips
(a nice, new enterprise:
It’s only initiative, resource, necessity
- akin to pulling teeth of battlefield casualties and kidneys from migrants).
It’s no one person’s choice
or responsibility,
the collective democratic principle
of the people’s wish
- on behalf of one set or side.
Clutching at straws,
jumping like frightened fleas,
from one hope or chance to another,
not atall comforted or reassured by
media messages’ distractions and denial - to euphemisms or suppressed alarms
and second-hand platitudes.
Not to rock the boat or seed panic;
Yet, reading behind the lines, tones
and facial expressions, raw fear lurks.
Whose kidding who?
Saving one’s skin. Not soul.