The Responsible Hate Anthem of J. Abernathy Thaxton (Part 5)

Shall I lie and say, I have sulked through empty streets

And breathed the fumes that float from the windows

Of urban humans in ear buds, who never speak aloud? ...

We should have stayed in our ragged burrows

Scraping across the floors of sacred soil.

And the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, sleep so peacefully!

Smothered by our long fingers,

Extinct … gone … nothing lingers,

Dumped into a pit, rotting in our backyard.

Should I, after soda and candy and cones,

Have the will to work our existence out of crisis?

And though I have neither wept, fasted, nor prayed,

I have seen our heads (filled with cliches) brought on a silver platter,

We have no prophet — and there is no great matter;

We have seen the illusion of our greatness falter,

And have smelled the death of the eternal, yet still cling to the altar,

And in short, we are cancer.