Gaia is trying to kill us
She has nurtured us until
We have become an infestation
Too successful you might say
Or maybe she was too good to us
Made it too easy perhaps
Giving us big brains and opposable thumbs
…We were her favorites
The chimp like hominids
In sheep’s clothing
She’s trying to kill us
No choice she says
Self defense
Squandered our inheritance
She says
Ungrateful though we profess our love of her
…Save us, we call now
At all the altars we can construct
At the foot of every god we can envision
Save us, we love her
How can a mother kill
Her own children
Drown them, starve them
Trample them under cloven boot heels
Choke them with their own riches
Wars, poverty, famine
…We love her
We entreat her please, please
Oh god please give more
More
There’s never enough
For the successful chimp
Who fashioned a world
Of reward that turned
Away from the prayers of
The faithful to Gaia oh mother
Can you spare some time?
…Gaia is killing us
After nurturing us over millennia
until we have become an infestation
Over the millions of years that
Have collapsed like a singularity
Into this moment when we peer into
The abyss of possible futures
…We thought we were favorites
The chimps in sheep’s clothing
Who now infest the garden
She has so carefully tended
Threshing the weeds from the chaff
We are become the weeds
Winding wantonly around her legs
She kicks at the dirt
…I remember stories of grandmother
The kittens Gaia
Sitting with a box of kittens
In her lap down in the basement
Next to the furnace with flame
Tickling the edge of the open door
Wringing the neck of the next kitten
And tossing it into the fire
…The preachers summon their flocks
And talk about free will
(another chemical high to induce our cooperation)
As if we could separate ourselves from the
Sandal that now is squashing us
In the midst of our ravenous feeding frenzy.
…No need for distress,
It’s really just a thinning of the herd
Like the kittens thrown in the furnace
A culling is all, Can you hear the cull?
…No choice she says
Bringing war, famine, pestilence
She must, no choice it’s her or us
And we’re just another
Evolutionary experiment
Who squandered their inheritance
Save us, we call
At all the altars we can construct
At the foot of every god we can envision
Save us, we love her
How can a mother kill her own children?