Watch kept, caracara over prey

Scoffing at their frailty

Mounting scorn towards these colonies of consumption

Open jaws that sicken me

Burial mounds rising in the rain

A flood plain won't drown you out

Sediment layered over tunnels so labyrinthine

Evaporating

Paths driven forward

Survival out of spite

Fortified protection

A display of strength

Within two centuries we've derived a sixth mass extinction

Humans have created a global crisis bound by little to no regulation and continue to accelerate toward imminent death

From data centers and the industrial meat complex to the razing of forests and ethnic cleansing abroad, we are all guilty

We treat extermination like something erotic, waging holy wars to fill our ever-growing hunger, however insatiable

The castes of mandibles I fear are of little consequence, playing their part, oblivious to the Holocene around them

We eat, we sleep, we burn, we fall back on our selfish desires

We treat this world as if we have another we can afford to replace it with

We hurtle toward the breach and pretend we weren't the ones who cut out own brakes

When it's your time

Will you lie down and accept defeat

When it's your time

You won't be forgiven

When it's our turn

Will we be content with all that we've done

When it's our turn

Who will be forgiven