POEM: Unappreciated

It’s a symptom of Western reductionism.

Strip everything to its parts,

Ignore the whole,

Forget the environment it was ripped from.

Whether dissecting a fruit to its traces of vitamins & minerals

Or a man to his bare genetic frame

Ignore the liquid blue elephant in the room.

Our bodies are 70% made of it,

Earth is 70% covered in it,

There’s enough of it in the air

To coat our planet with an extra inch!

How do we ignore that?

We’re trained like dogs

To mistake its taste for tasteless,

Mistake thirst pangs for hunger,

Mistake its fall from heaven for bad weather,

Mistake its exit from a mother’s womb for broken.

We must de-domesticate ourselves.

Drink

Until we’re bursting to pee out the ignorance

We forced our bladders to hold in

‘Cause we thought it was bliss.

Drink

Until our pores have to pour out

The years of pollutants we slathered on our skin

‘Cause we were told they fight the signs of aging.

Drink

Until your brain is quenched with knowledge

And your spine & joints are saturated with a passion

To drown out the dams that quarantined you from truth.

Drink

And when you’ve achieved that

Go for a swim in yourself

So you always remember where to turn

To return to the perfection

You were stripped from.

 

© One Tawny Stranger, June 2016