Why do you ask so many questions? Why did you shoot me with your drugged gun? Why did you take me captive? Why did you disrupt the way I act? Why are you surprised that I say this? Has no one asked you this in the place where your caste lives? Are you intelligent? Do you know civilization? Do you know biology and chemistry? Do you know unity? Do you know future? Why did you come here? Has no one said that your manures disrupt the ice? Has no one said that your drugged gun disrupts our work? Has no one said that all the instruments you plant inside the ice disrupt our work? Why are you surprised that I say this? We thought you knew. Liverworts and lichens, little-eared seals and huge elephant seals, midges, hairgrass, pearlwort, snow petrels, nematodes, rotifers and tardigrades all knew.

Rotate your globe 90° to the north. Yes. This plain white dough that is shaped like a decaying rayfish surrounded by the ocean is our place. You call it Antarctica. We call it Sanctuaire. We do not want it to be disrupted. No caste wants their place to be disrupted. We are the fumiers. You call us penguins. We fertilize the Archaea that live deep underground in the great subglacial lakes that we call Planète. You call them Lake Vostok, Lake Untersee and Lake Ellsworth. The ice is melting and the waters of Planète are rising. It is most of Earth's fresh water. Each place on Earth will be disrupted if Planète's waters reach the surface. We thought you knew. Liverworts and lichens, little-eared seals and huge elephant seals, midges, hairgrass, pearlwort, snow petrels, nematodes, rotifers and tardigrades all knew.

You do not mine Sanctuaire for minerals or make colonies. Sanctuaire is hidden on your maps. Sanctuaire's ice has not been very much disturbed since the Archaea arrived 900,000 years ago on chassignite, hakhlite, and shergottite meteors. You call one of them ALH84001. Did your scientists encounter the Archaea in the deep methane waters? Did your cameras record where the Emperors went and why? My caste is Adélie. Our other castes are King, Chinstrap, Gentoo, and the Rockhopper who have eyelashes like you. We all hunt ice-shrimp, floaterfish and squid. We feed our manures to the ice cap and the ice cap feeds Planète. We thought you knew. Liverworts and lichens, little-eared seals and huge elephant seals, midges, hairgrass, pearlwort, snow petrels, nematodes, rotifers and tardigrades all knew.

You call them the Hindu. We call them the Gentoo. They live near human colonies on islands that you call Malvinas. We call them Malouines. The Gentoo see you hunt fish in the sea. They see your mines and your manures disrupt the islands and the sea. Sheep manure spreads on the islands. Will this happen on Sanctuaire? What is your purpose here? You shoot some of us with the drugged gun and attach bands to our feet. You leave manure that disrupts the Archaea. You plant instruments in the ice. The Gentoo see your colonies spread heat. Heat melts the ice and Planète's waters rise. Why are you surprised that I say this? We thought you knew. Liverworts and lichens, little-eared seals and huge elephant seals, midges, hairgrass, pearlwort, snow petrels, nematodes, rotifers and tardigrades all knew.

The Archaea preserve Planète. Planète preserves Sanctuaire. Sanctuaire preserves our castes. Our castes manure Sanctuaire. Sanctuaire manures Planète. Planète preserves the Archaea. The ice must not melt. Are you intelligent? Do you see this? The Archaea preserve Planète. Planète preserves all other places. All other places will be disrupted if the waters of Planète rise. Are you intelligent? Unclip this band from my foot. Then write on the band that your caste must not spread heat. Then clip the band onto your foot. Then go back to your caste on Malouines. Then tell your caste what is written on the band. Tell them we thought you knew. Liverworts and lichens, little-eared seals and huge elephant seals, midges, hairgrass, pearlwort, snow petrels, nematodes, rotifers and tardigrades all knew.

Wow, this quite a trip. Surprises all over the place. Strong writing.
Reminded me of Ferlinghetti's Cries of Animals Dying, for reasons both obvious and not so . . .


B.



CRIES OF ANIMALS DYING
               LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI


In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of all the animals dying out
all animals everywhere
dying & dying
the wild animals the longhaired animals
winged animals feathered animals
clawed & scaled & furry animals
rutting & dying & dying
in shrinking rainforests
in piney woods and high sierras
on shrinking prairies & tumbleweed mesas
captured beaten starved & stunned
cornered and traded
species not meant to be nomadic
wandering rootless as man
All the animals crying out
in their hidden places
slinking away and crawling away
through the last wild places
through the dense underbrush
the last Great Thickets
beyond the mountains
crisscrossed with switchbacks
beyond the marshes
beyond the plains and fences
(the West won with barbed-wire machines)
in the high country
in the low country
in the bayous
crisscrossed with highways    

In a dream within a dream I dreamt
of how they feed & rut & run & hide
how the seals are beaten on ice fields
the soft white furry seals with eggshell skulls
the great green turtles beaten & eaten
exotic birds netted & caged & tethered
rare wild beasts & strange reptiles & weird woozoos
hunted down for zoos
by bearded black marketeers
who afterwards ride around Singapore
in German limousines
with French whores    

In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of all the earth drying up
to a burnt cinder
in the famous Greenhouse Effect
under a canopy of carbon dioxide
breathed out by a billion
infernal combustion engines
mixed with the sweet smell of burning flesh
And all the animals calling to each other
In codes we never understand
The seal and steer cry out
in the samre voice the samre cry
The wounds never heal
in the commonweal of animals
We steal their lives
to feed our own
and with their lives
our dreams are sown    

In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream
of the daily scrimmage for existence
in the wind-up model of the universe
the spinning meat-wheel world
about to consume itself
And in a dream within a dream I saw
how the bad breath of machines
sickens earth and man
and consumer culture
eats earth and man
and bottom-line capitalism
masquerading as democracy
rapes earth and man    

But in a dream I dreamt a dream of how
all the watershed people of the earth
all the ethnic peoples of the earth
all the disenfranchised people of the world
the Mom-and-Pop people of America
the youth of America and the poor of America
would at last rise up
and dismantle industrial civilization
without killing anybody
and save mankind from itself.

I like expecially the penguin's solution -- to write the new idea on the band and to wear it ourselves.  This is a first rate piece of persona writing.  I like the refrains, too.

Thank you for weighing in, Brian and Rick. I feared this might be too...whatever it is...for anyone. It may not be out of the woods yet but at least it's in yuz-2's ballpark (to mix metaphors happily).
I enjoyed the Ferlinghetti. As I was scrolling up to the top to read the post, and I saw all that there, my first thought was: Oh my God, somebody has edited the whole thing into another form for me, they must be crazier than I am! Anyway, Thanks.
-Tom

"Persona writing," a term I never heard at all when in school, is a big part of middle and high school assignments today. As I read your comment, my daughter was working on a letter to Holden Caulfield from his therapist, and my son was channeling a character from "Candide"! -Tom

Your house sounds like the place to be, Tom.

I very much enjoyed this piece, having worked through my initial thought that it might be a bit too 'whatever it is'.

Thanks,

James

James, thank you for your doggedness and report. Tell me, if you can and please, what puts up the initial obstacle? The overall dense appearance? Particular lines near the beginning? I am unpractised with this kind of form and open to all specific problems and suggestions. Thanks. Tom

For me, the initial thought of too 'whatever it is' dissipated pretty damned quick.  Yes, there was/is the bulk of it there on the screen, the quick-march of statements, the naming, the castes, the questions . . . But the rhythm or sync of the thing overtakes the 'too whatever' and I am inside this place with the little-eared seals and the lichen, hoping my seat on the rock or the chair doesn't melt.  And the band thingie reversal at end -- terrific, and fits, so absolutely to the piece.

Bravo, You!

Thank you for reporting in on this, Lynn, and I'm very glad you enjoyed it! -Tom

Not nearly as glad as I am that you wrote it!

Went beyond 'a bit too' and into the realm of 'more please' for me.

Love the ending.

Oh, and tell them it's not that we are the last to know. It's that we are the last to pay attention.

Message sent, Lavonne, via ankle courier and through reverse transcription: Mi vse vemo, ampak smo pozorne na nič! Thank you for reading and liking. --Tom

Thank you, Maggie. I'll let the fumiers know that the ankle band made it farther than they imagined! - Tom

Lynn asked me if I had seen your, poem, Tom,
and I told her I had a quick look and planned on
reading it later tonight.

Well, she read it to me and I was knocked over with its message,
its V and its wonderful use of repitition, its sophisticated humor,
and your imagery was, well, I just have to tell you I could see this penguin's
head moving from side to side as he was speaking and thought what a wonderful,
and unexpected presidential address this would make.

Seriously, though, this spoken aloud is amazing.

I hope your reading somewhere, and if you are, that this is a poem you will read.
And if your not, get your butt out there.

Maggie

Obama is a bit penguinlike, don't you think?
Sounds like Lynn is a great reader.
This poem, more than usual, I read aloud repeated during the whole time I was working on it, thinking it was the only way to keep a handle on it. Your comment makes me think I should make the effort to read everything aloud a lot. Not easy, the fam thinks I'm crazy enough, but probably a good idea.
Anyhow, thanks your for thoughts and pick, Maggie. Tom