Environmental Relativity

Every Man a Homer

This much I think is undisputed:
drought within the Amazon,
the world’s most vital rainforest.
Its rivers dry like alcohol.
Mosquitoes breed like rats. Great trees
burn down like filtered cigarette

incendiary toothpicks. Every
other fact is open to
interpretation, all depending
on which interest group is slyly
purchasing the planet earth.
But that’s the state of things when even

Watergate’s seditious Woodward’s
now official federal court
stenographer and some conclusive
murderer’s mistaken for
a saint. It’s all the same in such
a black and white terrain. You’re either

with us or some hypocrite,
a silly cartoon silhouette
that’s drawn in simple colors: yellow
or loudly red and white and blue.
It doesn’t matter when the end
is definitely overdue.

~Son Rivers 2005