The Ali Academy Community

Will I Be Well?

I’m acidic, sour,

I’m bitter, dour.

I twist, I turn,

I simmer, I burn.

 

My meadows are hushed,

My toads silenced,

My butterflies puerile,

My bees sterile.

 

Noses singed,

Eyes gated.

Livers polluted,

Cerebri coagulated.

 

Fumigated, pesticided, chemicalized,

I’m not well.

Scorched here, scalding there,

How could I be well?

 

“Just war,” “unjust war,”

When is it just? And for whom?

When is it unjust? And for whom?

Surges of victors,

Morgues of victims.

 

Men don’t keel over, like in flicks,

They just explode—flying bits.

And, oh yes, babies and children,

Things collateral, mere adjuncts of war.

 

Hopes—vanishing rockets,

Despair—lingering hummvees.

Your exploding cyberspace.

My imploding inner space.

 

Fathers with seared blood,

Mothers’ mitochondria marred,

Teenagers tired and brain-fogged,

Girls, precocious puberty scarred,

Little boys in muted hollows.

 

Once I was sweet mother,

Soul abraded, I sizzle with rage.

I am Earth, mother of the sick,

—of people, of plants, ofanimals.

 

I am mother Earth,

Sick and unwell.

Will I get better?

Will I ever be well?