words:
their land
it is the season when the farmers
poison the watershed en route short-term
to profit from store shelves filled
with middle class genetic abominations
this land is their land
where iowan ethanol destroys louisiana shrimp boats
between the oil rig leaks, data center run-off and factory fires
remember to ask an adult before drinking from the tap.
In my rural lakeside paradise the cityfolk enculturate
by paying for pesticides to be sprayed before they arrive
(never when they are up north)
onto their mansions, in the trees, into the water
cutting off the food chain at the six kneed obnoxious buzzers
for three weeks-a-year of drinking in the sun and jet skis
to recoup from the industrial hazards of Chicagoland
(the proverbial Metropolis). Impervious, ingenious and
ignorant of the silent springs they manifest.
Rooming houses balance portfolios indebted by mortgages
(buoyed by oil stocks, weapons makers and data centers)
somewhere between Kafka and Symphysis.
Outsiders who must hate this land because they poison it
drowning frog songs with stereos and
shooting fireworks into the tree canopy
fuming exhaust, self-righteousness and impatience.
This is their land.
Your existence on it has always been conditional.
It has always been theirs. And they want it to look like Skokie does
but like Skokie did, in 1977: segregated
as the wetlands gentrify into urban blight
the herons and loons move to the Upper Peninsula
the cityfolk on their tails forever.
We all see it and know it is ruinous, some even recognize illegality
(ask the tribe two towns over, on the reservation,
about how this nation treats legal incongruities).
It is okay to have nothing but the cognitive dissonance
of Woody Guthrie's sentiment and the reality:
parceling the commons and auctioning the preserves
visceral sensuousness of fleeting rural folk.
They've siphoned the water and poisoned the air
and next they come for the literal soil beneath your feet
with big-time ideas, turn-key opportunities
golden promises that panned out so well back home.
And always, transplants are looking to move on.
Not like wanderlust--the psychological unrest that spurs movement
--but chasing investments in the fluid market.
Theirs is a nation of opportunity.
Yours is the land beneath your feet.
This land is yours.
source:
Photographing Sentinelese people has been illegal since 1957 and the Indian government protects the island as a reserve. Therefore, nobody should profit (or own) from this image. These people--contacted by missionary, ship and drone--are evidence that there is no inhabitable place on earth to escape the voracious imperial beasts.