Hollowed Ground Beneath Our Streets

The state of the environment and such

We recycle the world, trading words no more original than the dirt.
We string together old parts to make new machines to do our work,
For us, to replace us. To do away with what we've defaced, to rid the rust.
Machines to make machines, machines to break machines.
Machines to make easy the clean, the world wide bleaching.
Bleaching the plain's grass, making flat the vistas.
Power washing the horizon with clear soiling smog and choking dust.

Somewhere along the way we undid the jigsaw that made the picture,
Now we're left with smaller images separated by fissures.
Dismantling the raft while afloat in stormy waters for the hope of firewood,
When we land on foreign shores.
We pillage our own towns, sell the sod beneath our feet,
Unaware of the pitfalls, concerned only with the progression of street,
Overtop arable gold and along silver fishings.
Make the houses cheap and give it all the finishings.

Man made mold spreads across the land, it's concrete hold growing,
Choking the host we are all in debt of, making weak the lungs that breath for us.
Blue-green veins become stained with run-off.
The once proud carer bought off with clean money to cut loss.
Nails bit quick to the wick, hair slick and complexion sick,
Joints ache and click, Mother now hobbles with aid of stick.
Tremors and fevers, coughs and cold take hold more easily.
She's always been in spin but now she feels it dizzily.

Things make up the coat that She wears thin.
Yet we pick at the seams and forget to brush off the lint.
She has worn civilizations on those shoulders.
Carried lives in her arms and helped us in breaking boulders
To build our cities of order, using tool and toil,
To dig wells and drag forth the cursed oil.

We fight wars over her and it breaks her heart.
We fail to understand she is more than the sum of our parts.