“little, little graves“.
I have read that somewhere.
Just now.
Four little walls and a fifth to make you stay.
Stay put and in your place.
But there will be no little graves. There will be none at all.
Or maybe one big grave if that’s how you want to look at it.
One mass grave. An Earth of corpses, fitting a dead planet.
Ashes, and rubble, and pieces of corps, and corpses, still intact I mean, and ruin, and dust.
I imagine a lot of dust. I say I imagine because, of course, I have not seen. Not yet at least.
Not in real life, at least. At least, because it could always be worse!
Remember! It could always be worse.
Through screens I see it unravel.
I cannot imagine the oppressing stench, the cries, the thundering booms
that tell you that your life is forfeit. To see your infant lying broken, in wet pieces.
Or fresh charcoal. To smell your past burning. To have your identity twisted and defiled. Your
acid breath searing, rattling your throat. Your flesh wasting away in front of your eyes.
Because someone decided. Not fate or the circle of life.
Someone. Someone decided.
I imagine in a pristine room. Four high walls designed and laid out to their preference,
their fancy. That is, catered to their taste. With catering as well.
We would not want their stomachs to growl, to ache.
I only know my dread for the earth. For the beauty of life.
The marrow-deep fear and loathing of fish drowning in black, inky stains.
The grey, brackish morass of dead coral reefs. The thick, twisting clouds over burning paradise.
Dead animals sizzling into oblivion. Emaciated polar bears meeting their deep, icy end.
The homo sapiens triumphing at. long. last.
Or maybe not even that long last. After all it has only been these two thousand odd years.
How innovative we are. The superior species, I’m sure.
Little, little graves for all the dreams,
innocent souls, both “human” and not,
beauty,
art,
nature,
life,
the illusion of civilisation.
Four little walls and a fifth to keep them down.