Cause
And Effect
Listen. Can’t you hear
it?
It lies between
The woodsman’s keen, care-less axe,
Flashing in the mellow, witnessing sunlight,
And the ancient oak tree falling,
Centuries of stories untold.
It lies between
The bird’s soft, sad, soulful, summer song,
As though somehow knowing, waiting, accepting,
And the harsh crack of the huntsman’s rifle;
The harpoon’s arrow-swift flight,
And the whale’s last, screaming, drowning breath.
It lies there between
A cursory prayer of respect and thanks,
At the very best,
(And then still meaningless)
And a living, terrified beast’s cut throat,
A life exchanged for a tawdry, fat-burger.
Listen, dear reader, listen
For the sound, I implore you,
Between the hangman’s well-oiled lever
And the body dropping, jigging, jangling
On a fiercely swinging rope,
Piss and crap running down its legs;
Listen for that awful, desperate sound,
That lies between
The sniper’s, half exhale, trigger squeezing,
And a brain, magical, like no other, exploding.
Why won’t people listen
Before it is too late?
Why don’t they hear it?
It is clear, loud and clear,
(Perhaps they do not wish to)
Lying between the shells hooting overhead
And the lung-tearing, blinding, throttling gas;
The sound between the profligate waste
Casually scraped from a plate,
Perhaps to feed the pigs,
Or more often just to rot,
And the obscene death-rattle
Of unnecessarily starving children.
Come now; listen!
It is imperative!
You really must listen
For the dread-full sound
That lies between
The bell tolling for the innocent,
And the blood-sniffing knife stealthily slipping
Into the betrayed lover’s already shattered heart;
The firing squad volley on a misty morning,
And Otto Schimek’s righteous, principled, pointless death
For his absurd, offensive morality,
Refusing to shoot unarmed civilians;
The bomb bay doors opening,
A vicious bald eagle Enola Gay laying its foul egg,
And melting a city of over sixty six thousand souls,
Non-combatant men, women and children,
Captain Tibbets returning to accolades from all.
I see, oh I see, though I do not understand.
You may not listen now;
Perhaps you do not understand,
Though you, like me, are complicit.
No matter; it is as it is,
And if you will not, then too late you will hear;
Too late but all humanity will hear
The sound between pressed buttons,
(Perhaps big buttons and little buttons
Pressed by an old, narcissistic, delusional fool
And a young, paranoid psychotic)
And the apocalypse,
Humanity’s very own,
Self-made, Hell-bent Armageddon,
Bequeathing the groaning planet
To cockroaches, scorpions and the like,
Who may make a better fist of the stewardship.
And that sound?
The sound which will remain,
Though we are all gone,
That sound that lies
Between creation and destruction?
Why, it is,
And has been,
For long,
And for long,
God weeping.
