See the fray of decay,
look at the level of debris,
even the God
who walked on water
they nailed to a tree.

a falling boy's
measured out footprint,
slipping in vain search
for a breadcrumb of solace

lost is spring, and green,
and bird nesting,
lost is his mother's smile,
he breathes in deeply

a memory of trees,
an afternoon sun
emptied of fertility:
a high wood on its last, teetering legs

urban air is everywhere
and wishes to be free,
but we are all carbon emissions,
separate living-dying pieces

polluted hieroglyphics
with nothing to convey,
fragments of a prayer
with nothing left to say

Nature followed her footprints,
Planting seeds in the sand
With every forward land,
Blooming trees to the moon.

Wind would whistle between
The curls of her bronzite hair,
Setting a crown of flowers upon her head,
Hues of violets and blues.

No matter how much strength
She placed in the land,
There was only so much she could do
To brace the incoming doom.

Her eyes as forests
Would get torn down one by one,
Leaving nothing but rabbit holes
In the tracks that were left.

Generations would soon come to see,
The everlasting beauty of her earth.
In what was worth protecting.
What was left for recovering
before her last breath.

Beyond the piles of fractured rocks
And the dunes that echo empty
Lies no more songs of the wind
Or any fruits of pleanty
The sky it darkens so much so
That the nocturnes all come out
But not a star nor moon is there
Just black fog seeping out
The trees are withered well and good
From poison tears that fall
The creatures move - mirages
Of what they were before it all
No more ocean and no more skies
When plastic people pester please
The forges of nature overrun
With men of metal and guys of greed

- Anisah Mariah

The Sumatran orangutan, gardening her spot  
comfortable in the canopy and lush tree top,
nursing her young month-old,
fell fiery below, seventy-four holes
in her when the shooting stopped.

Four air gun pellets pierced her left eye,
two her right, leaving her darkly blind,
a howling Homer, Milton in orange pain,
bereaved, childless, now a wild-less refrain
scratching the earth for any hopeful frame..

Her collar broken, lacerations from sharp objects
on her upright arm and leg, one left finger a socket.
Her fiery camouflage that hid her in the canopy light
is singed in the clearing flame, her skin turned night    
just another victim of human slight.

She will suckle her ghost child five years until mature
for the pain she has there is no real animal cure.
Use to solitude she is now truly truly alone,
even as the human rescuers reset her broken bones.
For in the war between good and bad man she is the lure.

Spared the ignominy of being a rich Clint Eastwood’s pet,
she will live out her life in sanctuary and uneasy stress
away from those who fear a Planet of Apes,
a refugee of the Air Gun War with her own tamed space,
PTSD, therapy, rehabilitation and very high tree state.