Tag Archives: find the balance

Day 09 – have trade will travel

ESY-032331823 - © - jc_cards

There’s more verses half written for this poem, but I couldn’t work out where they should go. This is a WIP.

*****

Homo economicus

for over 40 years free trade has been touted
as the solution to all social & economic ailments
— trade is really code for countless uninvited invaders

the Chinese went to Africa for sorghum
brought back camels then used them to establish
one of the greatest invader routes ever — The Silk Road

Columbus traded (if that can be the term)
European disease for New World gold — yet
smallpox, measles & tb killed more than sword or gun

hitchhikers today hijack the best transporters
money can buy — shipping containers which daily import
thousands of animals, insects, microbes & diseases to ecologies

ill-equipped to deal with them — because profit is paramount
& preventing illegal human immigrants is far more pressing

Day 07 – the obsession that’s eating our planet

07 Doutielt3

One of the things I hope to do over this month is come at the theme PANDEMIC from a range of angles. Looking at, if possible, a little like a cubist Picasso painting where we can look at all sides of the subject at once. It’s still a bit stat heavy but this poem really is about the big elephant in the room. (Not it’s not really an elephant.)

*****

plague species 

a mere ten millennia ago when we first
trick tamed cattle from wild aurochs
humans & those critters that would become
our domestic buddies (cows, chickens, pigs, sheep)
represented around 1% of earth’s biomass
wild animals (using the most basic maths)
represented 99% of all living creatures.

now humans & the beasts we own as pets
property or product are somewhere
between 96-98% depending on the study cited.
basically earth has been stolen from free-living
animals for those species we most love to pat
but even more so for those we lust to eat.
the plague has spread — & continues to …