Reality | Real People Poetry Collective

Refined Trees; Pointless Leaves Falling

Faultless glass towers glint in the sun,

The wind blows between them and goes unheeded.

A building with such transient soul and hollowness

Was made by the best engineers.

Flood, hurricane, blizzard - only they

Can measure up against such buildings.

Such a society.

Greenery is rife around the city,

But never unchecked,

Never allowed to persevere in the way its nature demands.

So they changed the greenery.

Humans are greater than nature, now,

Dependent but in control.

Somewhere behind me, a child giggles

Poking a caterpillar on a leafy branch.

Joyful, carefree, unknowing.

But researchers long ago ensured that

The caterpillar is big and fat and

That child would exist no matter what.

Medicine makes diseases adapt,

Naturally creating freaks of nature.

Genetically modified human offspring

In each generation, making humans

Unnatural freaks apart from nature,

Altering themselves and others at will.

Humanity is too arrogant.

Humanity doesn't care.

Humanity walks with demons that look like angels.

And yet, there are still places, just like this,

With overgrown trees arching their boughs

Overhead, their leaves deep green with

Crunchy carpets of fallen greenery and shrubs

Underfoot. In these unseen places,

I get out my camper chair -

Manufactured by humans, plastic and super-fibre -

And pretend that only I am left.

Pretend that unchanged angels still walk the Earth.

I open my book and read from paper pages,

Forgetting that books like this,

Physical, papery, musky,

Are rare, antique, obsolete.

I wish desperately that I were in another world,

Where humanity doesn't rule indefinitely.

I wish hopelessly that I wasn't superhuman,

And could fall sick to the cold,

Because that would mean

I am human, I am natural.

That would mean that I am meant to be;

My existence is meaningful,

There is some point in living,

A purpose.

But, alas.

Someone else solved all the problems

And now we just exist.