beautiful leaves

don't leave me here

at all the pretty green leaves

i stare at what the breeze does shake for me

in front of me right here

in such, 

           such,

 splendid beauty

this is happy

yes?

    that was contentment

no? 

    and over there is satisfaction?

indeed...

              we fall for anything

we're so f****n' human

there is death here

     and over there 

eating life

    such is life

ugh. . . so delicious 

and there is suffering

  disaster and anarchy 

 and just over the horizon. . .

    our ends are so f*****g near

     yours and mine

for everyone of us

         me and you

you and i

         her and him

this and that

  us together

everything forgotten,

      it's getting closer

and we know this...(don't ya know this?)

 and that

every detail

of every,

single,

f*****g,

thing. . .

we have waiting for us

after here

    is nothing known

on our way 

to nowhere

                   leading to more nowhere

on another spot on anywhere

    who the f**k knows. . .

we have no one

   not even one at all

beyond us, them

and the viciously arbitrary 

         the water turns black

and

   so goes life

 and such is living

                    and of dying?

and surviving?

we do know this, 

             "i have no control"

after that

              …

the god damn bacteria will rule the world

Author's Note

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

That image you posted is haunting. We are butchering our planet, totally butchering it with our materialistic attitude. The plastic situation is a timebomb. I dread what my grandchildren and their kids will think of my generation. We were the ones who started it all. We should be the ones doing all we can to clean it up, and yet I fear time is running out. Keep looking at those lovely green leaves while we have them, teasing us in the breeze. All those gems of nature, our treasures. How long will we have them? How long will our species live on this planet, if we continue this way? Yes it is scary. Very scary and the western world is mainly responsible.

Chris

[Davidgeo]

You might have read a version of this that was not fit for reading. I got a little sloppy and uploaded a very rough draft.

Not to say it's profoundly better or anything but, it might be a little more coherent at this point.

I agree with the spirit of review none the less. It's not really even debatable at this point, if we continue to do what we've been doing (on a global industrial scale) things are going to get slightly awful in 100 or so years.

[Davidgeo]

… the picture is from Natron Lake in Africa if you were wondering. They call it a "soda lake". For obvious reasons

[Chris Shaw]

Soda Lake, yeah, says it all. Re read, a better version and your ending stronger from what I remember on first reading.

[Chris Shaw]

In my opinion you have the basis for a really good poem here. If you have lost interest, save it for a rainy day and work on it with further edits.

[Davidgeo]

Thanks Chris. I think I agree. But there is something I really don't like about that poem, but I'm not exactly sure. I wish I didn't call it "finished" the other day.

[Chris Shaw]

Poems are never finished. You can work on them forever. I still edit stuff I wrote ten years ago. Leave it and go back to it in a couple of months. I think you started off strongly, and ended strongly. There was some stuff in the middle you might consider looking at again.

[Davidgeo]

That's some pretty excellent advice I think.

I owe you a soda.

[Chris Shaw]

Not out of soda lake lol

[Davidgeo]

Out of whisky lake.

[Chris Shaw]

More like it :)

[Beccy]

None taken, I'm here to write, not fight. :))

[Beccy]

There is no sarcasm in my reply; I am simply stating facts, undeniable facts. In the last hundred years or so we have caused immense ecological damage to the planet; and we continue down the same path, at our peril; though I imagine this will be the case, given that greed and self interest are the prime motivators of a great number of our species.

[Davidgeo]

Your "facts" are short sighted and cherry picked. I won't engage in a respectable conversation when I know that's where you're starting from.

No offense to you personally.

[Beccy]

In find it difficult to compare natural disasters with the man made version; but let us hope you are right.

The billion years in the making I referred to is the time it took our planet to nurture the fossil fuels we are now burning at an astonishing rate and which are already in terminal decline; and of course there is the rapid increase in deforestation, which if not checked will probably see the world's rain forests completely vanish in less than a hundred years.

As you say though, ours is a relatively short lifespan, so why worry.

[Davidgeo]

Not to worry was not at all the message I was trying to engender. Mass starvation and the like are not things one should ever not worry about if they can help it. I was just trying to convey the fact that a single species of limited number does not exactly control the fate of a planets ecosystem.

I do pick up on your sarcasm but it comes from a place of limited understanding so I'm choosing not to play into it.

The length of time it took to create fossil fuel is kind of irrelevant to what I'm getting at... you are concerned with the wrong things. It would be foolish and short sighted to think fossil fuels in any capacity are the future of our species energy needs.

[Beccy]

A hundred years or so is pushing it. What we currently rape from this planet was a billion years in the making and so far, it's been little more than two hundred years in the wasting. Meantime, it's lip service all the way; and though I don't wish it to be so, I think it's already too late for our species.

Beccy.

[Davidgeo]

Compared to some of the larger natural disasters in our planet's history our impact is really very overstated. Of all the major extinctions the events that spurred them were on scales we just don't have the footprint to rival. For example the End Permian extinction which wiped out around 95% of every single living thing was the result of completely natural causes. In fact all of the major extinction events were due to natural causes. While we certainly have the capacity to drastically reduce our quality of life and cause minor extinction events/reduction in population we just don't have the power to rival the real deal. Also, the current state of this planet was not a billion years in the making. The atmosphere and geology are in a constant state of change... we just don't notice it because of our relatively short lifespans and the relatively short history of our species.

[AYVID N]

bacteria...
and the rodents (" I once read 'On the Beach' by Nevil Shute)....I've read that rodents are the hardiest creatures in adversity. If one goes with logic, man is incidental in the random course of evolution, blessed with limited faculties, a little above average brain and a pathetic life span. Yet he takes it upon himself to cerebrate on everything which is a good thing if wasn't for the ego that cannot accept his "finiteness" (a sucker for control). Death boggles him the most because he cannot circumvent it. And therein lies the tragedy of man and happiness of rodents as they don't agonise. They just flow with the black water, eat, mate, multiply and grow.

This poem is appreciated so much David...thank you for sharing ⚘

[Davidgeo]

Being conscious in the way we are, all cerebral and self reflective, I think it's a curse. And if we don't use out intellect to figure out how to colonize other planets it will be an evolutionary disadvantage ("a great filter"). Humans as we current are have been around for about 170'ish thousand year, give or take a few tens of thousands... that's not a long time. Sharks have been around for almost 400 million years and basically have no intellect... they are pure instinct.

As I reread that poem I think it kinda sucks and it's too late to edit it as I've lost creative interest in it. I hate when that happens.
Thanks for reading and commenting anyway, it's always nice to hear your thoughts.

[AYVID N]

Its my pleasure