Our synthetic souls

Disconnected,
we suckle at invisible airwaves,
latching onto plastics and metals and information constructs.
Our bodies rely on that cherished electricity
and its latticework that spreads and frames the earth:
black cables beneath the soil,
hovering panels and capsules between us and the moon,
towers and wires out in the wind--
supported by once-trees made naked by factories.

Avaricious,
we always want and never need.
Our fancy boats coat lakes with a film of oil and exhaust,
but are parked on spotless-white carport concrete 361 days a year.
We walk in synthetic soles and fabrics
that are weaved of fake fiber by calloused, impoverished hands--
theirs is a place where asbestos fairy dust grants humble wishes
and our indifference executes a death sentence.

Egomaniacal,
we somehow become clinically depressed,
our diagnoses a product of unfulfilling lives.
We tote our problems as small typewritten medicine labels
pinned up against our shirts like badges,
next to our poisoned, wrinkle-free skin.
More proud than ashamed, we laugh and drink it off every night,
only to see if it will ever feel any different.

Destructive,
we take a valley (not home) and turn it into a city (home).
Every patch of grass intricately placed,
every block of broken concrete intentional,
every building some sort of sanctuary
or celebration of our supposed success.
The people are merely numbers, and the mayors rejoice
while nearby farmlands are forgotten next to cloned homes.

Spiteful,
we are each other's mules.
We refuse burden, lessen it with gestures and fingers,
wishing our pockets lined with litigious spoils.
Then we chuckle at primetime newscasts
while watching handcuffed executives
holding up briefcases to shield their faces
as they are escorted to blinking blue and white taxis.

Ignorant,
We horde consumer-end commodities
like they were apples freshly harvested from the orchard.
We are unaware of process or consequence,
only gleeful moments of self-gratification
that end up gracing carefully-selected entries in our diaries.
Then in standing lines at amusement parks
we check our wrists, visibly impatient
as our blood runs pink with cotton candy,
and we devour hot dogs made of thousands of bits
of the lives we line up to needlessly slaughter,
in a weak attempt to satiate our collective gluttony--

But there, in the end,
are our own lives really so different?
Or have we been dying so slowly,
so persistently over all these years,
that this world is the world we truly want--
the world we truly love?