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When red ran from the sand.
From the depths, rose a creature quite old.
Solemn and slow, not a care to be bold
It anchored itself, and gave no expression
The strength of its shell, shook in depressions
Tall extensions: its lifeblood, its protection.
Found scattered, on its shell, in cert’n sections.
The pride of Madagascar—the creature by name—
Are Rosewood and Ebony now mangled and maimed.
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When red ran from his hand.
Trees are felled, and the humans displace:
Lemurs are losing, they can’t find their space.
Hear the creature wail, its shell echoes with grief—
The sounds of its guests, find little relief.
For its pride is valued, and cut for a price
Hard decisions made—it is life’s device.
Wooden splinters bite back trading flesh to save flesh.
Living masses are caught in our culture’s great mesh.
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When red in hand and land.
Oceans to flood, new depths to behold
Our desires to fill, balk: “Don’t let them fold!”
She tires of our, meandering session;
Beating-out paths, to varied oppressions.
Laugh at the onslaught, of one great convection!
As humans propel, in that direction…
In all this, Gaia shrugs, naked-apes are to blame.
Fruiting, of hand and land, need-be one and the same!
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I mean to use Madagascar as a vehicle to express some of my compounded frustrations. Above all, this poem is an address to all our fellow ***** sapiens*. If we insist on digging our own grave then so be it. The earth will spiral on with or without us, and that is the simplest truth... if there is such a thing. We might think less about our inalienable right to plunder, and more about the stewardship of diverse lifeforms if we truly care for our lineage. People have been beating this drum for so long, who cares--right? I defer to Kurt Vonnegut: "Had I been a Bokononist then, pondering the miraculously intricate chain of events that had brought dynamite money to that particular tombstone company, I might have whispered, 'Busy, busy, busy." *Busy, busy, busy,* is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is" (from *Cat's Cradle,* pages 65-6). At the end of the day, we do what we feel we must... busy, busy, busy...