We walk the earth harnessing          we walk it branding&capturing. Our own exhumation peels back to reveal a femur&ulna locked together by joint stirrups. We are made of subjugation          the only authority we acknowledge is our own monstrosity. We the timberless we the walkers of change shackle our climate to decay and our prosperity to what purports itself to be growth disguising radioactive pestilence. A bloom of domestication. Once saddled          beasts struggle to find themselves. Fear fingers markings upon our cartographies of what is civil&evolved often exceeding the history of our lives we’re willing to share with our spawned          a truth too harsh for the still unsullied. We the constructors of monoliths          we the masons of greed breathe in great plumes&lead          exhale extinction. A forest of aluminum saplings          rafters of steel hanging from burning canopies. Death. Developing          we amputate legs out from under ourselves          our empathy atrophied. A truth too harsh we are no longer acquainted with song. Woodpeckers with bills of ivory          the warbling of Bachman Kauai O’o distilled into a haunting series of pulses magnetized onto tapes. 01101001. Singing up in smoke along with the ululation of a skeletal polar bear stranded amidst boiling water          salt evaporating into air. A whole world’s death rattle. We claim salt as the ailment that ignites our eyes stinging. We the pitiful          we can’t even recognize when tragic apathy poisons us. Our body can’t help but shed tears for the dispossession of our tenderness. Sentiment secretes from every pore          sweats down our hides making our tongues slippery. Tongue twisters exist more as formality. It’s something to say when destruction leaves stunned discord in its wake. Teeth can’t speak straight amidst this heat that evaporates everything          that particular grain that once roosted within us. Our voices reaped          a diseased harvest devoid of reverberation. Our mouths open nothing left of us to ring. We the lost          we the clouded. Mirrors held up to our faces we cannot discern where our eyes resemble eyes in flight          eyes submerged eyes          between leaves&trees          eyes burrowed in sand&heat          eyes fearing. We fear our own mortality. A truth: beasts often muzzle themselves out of fear          conformity&order. When we cannot contain our screams as we choke on our own hubris made atmospheric surrogate                    we bury ourselves beneath gypsum&concrete.