Nature Gets A Breather Poem by Buddy Bee Anthony

As a human being,
I have evolved
into a civilized social animal.
I know tricks to spew off enough smoke
and confusion to get out of most jams.
I have a large coiled brain
The more I feed my head
the more it wants. As my ears and my
feet, I'm sure my brain keeps on growing.
throughout my lifetime.
Couldn't we be, by some accident
or design, immortal creatures.
Actualize the legends we've become in our own minds.
At the same time, all this human horsepower
should make some among us
queazy about the horrors
we humans are capable of.

We've built fully automated houses
so we can lounge lazy
while we think on
and dream up the next bug zapper,
or some other heartache for
others living on our planet.
We've rescinded treaties and pacts with others
to limit and destroy them
while placing no limits on our holdings,
While employing flattery and throwing
crumbs to the rabble
us peons, heathens, we savages.
Mopping up the messes
in the grand ballroom, toiling day and night
slaving away
for the more fortunate ones
We're a species
all too hasty to assess and mete out final
solutions

Punishing judgement
dismissal, banishment,
making examples of the most enterprising
by calling us demons, monsters and creatures who must hang
from the bell tower,
young people who get
sucked down the human drain pipe,
into the wood chipper shoot,
dropped into
gulags filled with the
savages, beasts
this murky system has created,
Out of sight
out of mind
away from
the big winners
who've earned
the 'right' to have no contact with life's
losers, the less lucky
those tragic
unfortunates. The victors
sharing their rare air space
within the company of other winners.
Winners who by their unmatched
ability to win, take commanding control
of the on/ off and the kill switch
of their temperature controlled, safety checked,
environment.

Enter this world wide virus
The pandemic flipping the script.
Social planners and winners
have no say so, how it spread
no guarantee of safety,
on who lives and who dies.
Nobody is spared through merit
or some trick, or an accident of birth
Covid-19 is the great equalizer.
This is most disturbing since,
winners demand guarantees
an iron clad written warranty
to gain an advantage, to secure an
exemption from the horror of disease.
Defeat snatched from the
jaws of victory
Reputation scores come into
greater question,
Servant and master is under closer inspection.

Master and Ms.best case scenario
is tripping and flipping over their dance partners.
Symptoms making these captains of industry groggy.
barely able to get out of bed.
Everyone's in the same jam.
into the time out room in the corner.
sitting anxiously in detention
on the gym teachers
floor while we wait
for a vaccine a miracle cure, so we
can see better and assess
lines of demarcation; .


maybe hardship for once
will help humanity rethink
and discover
it's not what we have
but who we are and can aspire to be..
Maybe the silver lining of this die off
is we will re-evaluate our
social, economic and physical landscape
moving more toward brotherhood,
sisterhood and away from acquisition
and blood line inheritance.
Paying less tribute to competition
and more to cooperation.
Call out the rich and famous
who infer we haven't gone
for it hard enough
and can't understand why the rest of us
aren't
pushing hard enough on our
achievement throttle
while they're racing around on
a tropical key, aimlessly
on their yachts or jet skis.

We're all in this same leaky boat.
Sucking up this killer toxic dust?
During this virus
I'm squaring my accounts
mending my nets
preparing my next moves
because I want to
bust out of the gate
once this pandemic is over
and be more than a beautiful, tragedy.
I want to win. I'd be lying
if I said I aspire to lose.
Having been fed boxes and boxes of misinformation
a truck load of myths and half truths.
I just want to settle up now
by taking a stand.
If perhaps by writing this, I could earn my keep,
launching myself out of this cripple creek.

Part 2.


I can see through a new lens
Looking out
my window,
I notice more wildlife returning
bold and prolific, after a long year
without monarch butterflies,

The cool, wet, spring, where
we live, has a more normal feel to it
I haven't made travel plans.

I live in a quarantined box not unlike you.
a tiny square room,
where I broadcast this transcript
it's my daily news.
My perspective squeezed
into a 10 by 12 inch computer screen.
This new normal isn't normal for me.
My ancestors were social
creatures, and apex predators.
Warriors, cut throats, assassins, pirates.
Pimps, preachers, whores, minstrels, thieves Rabbi's,
gladiators, robber barons
the chosen one's pulling the strings
behind the curtain of marionette kings.
It's been established, we're brats.
We stalk and can kill any animal,
for personal gain, for sport, or survival.
We can blow people sky high, with auto- drones, steering
from an office cubicle, We can, with the touch
of a button destroy enemy targets, hundreds, even thousands of
miles away.
We're smart monkey's
on overdrive, super glide, turbocharged,
We can teach video game hotshots how
to destroy major cities
with a mouse click.
We've twisted mother's method,
the law of the jungle of
kill or be killed

But, the latest news is in
and we've found out,
there is a higher authority than the jungle.
We're always trying to get an edge over our surroundings,
exploiting, not so much working in concert with nature.
We're masterful at gaining the upper hand, getting the advantage, Pushing the envelope
Extracting resources from deeper in the ocean.
Mining more minerals on a higher mountain top.
Yet, we haven't figured out how
to be kind and get along with one another.
But, hooray for hunting a lion or an Elephant on safari
or for rocketing rich civilians into space.
shuttling them further and further
soon up to Mars and beyond.
I don't go into space for the same reason I don't vacation
in Hawaii. Because, why would these places want me to show up?
I'd just eat cheeseburgers wrapped in plastic wrap and pollute
any paradise..That's what I do. I pollute and they don't
want that. They'd be wise to put my mugshot on
page one of the do not enter list
fore, I'd muck up Hawaii.
I pollute ordering take out while sheltering in.
The Space Station may not mind my mess
but I wouldn't impose or presume Hawaiians would or should put up
with me.
Anything unknown or wild we shoot
strangle, angle, run down, kill, or fillet and
if you taste half decent on the grill,
you and yours better
run for your lives,
hiding in a hole, deep in the hills.
I run too from
ravenous, blood thirsty, thrill killing,
hungry maniacs and monsters.
I wear lots of neutral colored,
hoodies and assorted
urban camouflage, I want to look
just enough like a reasonable person
not to scare essential people
and appear just dangerous enough
so I'm not messed with by predators.
Lately, up in my cave, I've let myself go
a little.
Well, maybe more than a little.
I don't usually go out
after dark,
besides, There's nowhere to go,
since, nothing I need is open
Dogs and cats through the ages
have made special arrangements with us.
Aside from any dividends they've accrued,
lest not forget they've paid
a price for their alliances with humans.
Dogs know what's up.
Many run a game on their masters.
Very dramatic actors
pretending way too hard just
how much they love us.
I get the feeling some of this clingy behavior
is rooted in the fear from deprivation or violence.
I know what deprivation feels like.
Maybe you know what hunger feels like.
Cats, are far too curious, and as far as I can tell
have dealt with the freak show that is us,
through unwavering acceptance
Cats live the serenity prayer.
We didn't invent brattiness.
But, how we've perfected it.
With kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, and minsters.
Brats want things the way they want them
They feel they've worked damn hard to get them.
with goals of having everything they want
and in it's place..
Who's getting married?
Especially dating.
We are almost in
a cryonically, frozen, sexual state.
out of our roles of being decreed
all the spoils spread out on
very wide tables. Admittedly,
I understand bratitude.
I was raised by aspiring brats.
My early education by
children pretending to be parents
allowed me to play act
as a pretty convincing brat
I can, with some effort,
be an award winning brat
if not a world class brat.
I want and expect better,
there's little argument on that.

Brats aren't ever satisfied with whatever we get
and certainly are highly critical of what others get.
You don't have to be a brat, especially
now, to complain.
I am not happy with the current cloistered,
social picture. No hugging, and without faces,
can anyone tell me
Does anyone smile anymore?
We've become another fish in a draining fishbowl
we lost our sense of total dominion over all things
and with that loss of our dominion,
our defenses went way up
and our senses of humor went out the window
Everywhere I look I see my contemporaries,
looking unsettled, ragged, harried, and defeated,
like fish on the hook taunting
the fisherman to reel them into
the boat. An outcome preferable to
trying to continue to exist in a clogged up,
polluted river.
On some level, our sadness
is based on us being
vaguely aware we're
next on the extinction list.
The next dying swan,
we're another dead coral reef tragedy.
Even dogs have now lost confidence in us, and are turning on their masters, demanding they listen, forcing them to learn dog speak, and
rioting for tastier cooked foods.
better sleeping quarters, higher quality attention
and more exercise.
A few canine activists
are demanding a homeland of their own.
I know it's difficult for
every other species
to coexist a species of brats who
demand
their share be
100% of the take.
Brats who don't play by the rules, and won't take no
for an answer. Rugged Individualist brats Brats making
huge carbon footprints. Nature has put it's foot
down with us doing
with a new strategy.
Mother Earth has finally
said no more, to us.
We must stop carving her up finer,
and we best wise up.
Maybe this time we'll listen
We haven't been good at changing our mission.
We want to create, build, invent, dream,
to get more out of less..
We've circumvented logic to get a yes

when it's patently clear
to the rest of the animal kingdom
the answer is and has always been no
No, on our insistence on getting everything we want.
Holding dominion over
all other living things. That's been our
game plan. If this is our goal, we've
abused our two legged privilege
and overstayed our welcome
Then mustn't we somehow adapt, lower our
expectations,
or like the dinosaur, we can pack up and go.

no longer possessing dominion
over all that breathes.
The crawling, flying, slithering, and all us
heathens, heretics, outcasts,
the tumbleweeds, sage brush and trees.,

Building new mouse traps
affirms to all who question.
argue, or disagree,
You are put on display to be
punished, tossed to the lions,
made examples of
called radicals or malcontent defectives
aberrant exceptions,
rejected and tossed into funny farms or out on the street
where some professional thug with steel toed jack boot
puts
a toe tag on you, with a number,
to be cremated, or buried three deep.
But, as individuals with free agency, .
You men and women
who hold infinite promise.
What can we learn from this virus
changing the order of things.
Guess there's a huge cottage industry
coming of age to figure out our future dilemmas
Have we been asking the right or wrong questions?
Maybe we don't want to address our most pressing problem
because our biggest problem is we're too close
to the problem to be able to see the big problem is us.
The cure might be in not finding a vaccine
The brightest and most entrepreneurial, minds
are working day and night
to find our way back
on top of the food chain.
I'm quietly, rooting for
the wild animal kingdom
to catch their breath after being
buried by the relentless avalanche
called humanity




Buddy Bee Anthony

All publishing and editing rights reserved 'as is' by this author

Re-edited 12/30/2022 @11: 43 Pacific Standard Time