Polar Bears, Honeybees, The Dalai Lama, And You

Messy room with too many things?
Don’t panic –all the better to hide yourself.

An ascended master would tell you
to simplify and get rid of all that stuff.

I say, load up, get busy
making and buying toys.

You ain’t no saint and no one
wants to look at you,

so disappear as deep
as you want to in there.

The gurus who tell you to take it easy on
the salt, fat, and inorganic chemistry

you put in your mouth?  How stretched
and unhappy they appear.  Get fat on burgers

and fries if you so desire;
screw the lectures

from the newly Ayurvedic
and embrace what we’ve got here —

a culture staggering toward a new world devoid
of all we’ve grown to assume will last forever.

The righteous scream at you for species die-offs
and cracking glaciers.  They’re right

but they’re mostly upset for themselves.
The planet will die, they holler and shout.

Liars, deceivers, bullshit sellers.
This planet will not die, regardless of what we do.

Species will die, we will die —
but the planet, the great Connector Of All?

The planet won’t die.  It’s getting ready to twitch us off
like a particularly persistent mite.

One flick and — WHOOP —
we’re gone like dodos and moderates.

In five hundred years
it won’t even matter what we polluted or slew.

We’ll be as embarrassing as an old tattoo
to the planet, and just as easy to cover up.

So consume and collect and gorge and retch in the meantime.
You and the gurus are about to get cozy in the grave.

You and your stuff are about to get equally inanimate
and equally forgotten.  Polar bears, honeybees,

the Dalai Lama, and you together at last, finally
in agreement on one thing:  that it was too late

the minute the first of us stuck a head up
over the tall grass of Africa and thought:  mine.