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PLANET EARTH poem in selection of poems on various topics and themes, including America, Japan, Malawi and Guantanamo.
This PLANET EARTH poem is part of the Genghis Lotus Poetry Collection, a selection of poems free to read online. The collection includes school poems, city poems, nature poems, war poems, cancer poems, death poems, and, additionally, other poems, assorted poems on various topics and themes, this being one of those other poems. Webmaster for this site is poet Hugh Cook, born in Britain, educated in New Zealand, and the author of, amongst other works, the fantasy series Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. |
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short poems |
school poems |
city poems |
nature poems |
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war poems |
cancer poems |
death poems |
other poems |
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Paperback Book or US $5 PDF file |
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The intergalactic arena Is no frog pond. Baby cute is not what makes the grade. With the right stuff, Your planet can be a contender. But don't delude yourselves. Be realistic. So, objectively, The home crowd sentiment apart, How do we shape up? In some respects, Our favorite planet lags. On planet Earth, for example, The exploitation of babies for cuisine Has barely been initiated. Assassination is not yet corporate. Our major famines Are accidental rather than engineered. In economics, We are mere beginners. Our capitalism, for example, Is bagatelle-light. We would be laughed at if we sought comparison With Gloran Jarbot, also known as Arachtop IV, Where the rich eat the feet of the poor. We would seem similarly risible If set against the fiduciary logic Of Grilgrist Traven, Ninth planet of the brightstar Tring, Where the affluent old Purchase the eyes of the newborn. On the social system level We are naive, gauche and, To be frank, Laughable. But, still, we are in the game. We have, As our first advantage, Our amateur status. Going pro and joining the Cultural Combine Would put us in a different league again. As amateurs, of course, we do Our share of the usual stuff — Wars, genocides, atrocity camps and slaughterhouse regimes. But do it free. As yet, We don't get paid for it. Going pro would add Pain amplifiers to every nation's budget. But, On our shoe strings, At the low-tech end of the scale, Our Infliction Quotient is surprisingly developed. Amazing, when you think about it, What you can do with Dogs, Pliers, Electrodes, At simple bed frame vertical on a wall And a bath of water. That said, As torturers go, We're nowhere near the top. We don't have the requisite education, The ten-year courses On skinning folk alive. Our best inflictors are often not much worse Than a worst-case dentist. Our gulags, similarly, are amateurish. Our prisons are mere playpens compared to Mortis Vorbis Where the living rock Wrecks the incarcerated in the loving vice Of twenty solar cycles, Twenty cycles of slow compression To accomplish the last wet whimper of annihilation. In the realms of the commonplace, then, The billions Easily surpass our millions. Still, We have a boutique niche In things unique. Baklava, for instance, Is found on no other planet. Golf Is our personal perversion. My mother's quilt Is sui generis, The Great Wall of China Spilling in a tumblefall To a landslide of flowers. And the signature of my retina prints, That, too, Is a one-off only, The trashed planets of my eroded eyes Cratered by cancer wars, Debauched, More badly wrecked Than the world we choose to live in. |
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May be photocopied for classroom use |
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