This is a Seeing the Forest 24-year-anniversary poem. First published at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy because it belonged there.

Fossil-fueled psychopathic planetary pollution. Sew dependence reap profit and power. Smiling politicians with Kennedy haircuts and earnest, rolled-up sleeves issue focus-group words and wet their beaks.

Temperatures ever more extreme. The land becomes brown not green. Smoke from fires clogs our lungs. Species go extinct. Crops won’t grow.

It’s OK both sides do it radical terrorists say it’s wrong. Divisions are stoked and they are conquered.

It will trickle down.