When Looking Up for Birds, Bats is Wholey a Political Move

looking down, the new coltan blues
even hipster heroes
dotted with tattoos of dragons
origami etched on white skin
can’t find presence of mind
to espy great blue herons skimming
heat island waves above Portland

snippets of raptor persistence
hundreds fence-posted from Seattle
to Spokane, SUV winners’ prodigy
viewing head rest DVD CGI junk

is it a product of narcissism
blatant anthropomorphic stupidity
where endangered species only end
up cuddly white girl’s crib
inked on 24-Hour Fitness deltoid

not a soul gets the starling effect
why so many are clamoring eves
so many scoff at bats, the few
rushing out of nooks for pleasure
of spring lacy wings

overheard some bearded crafted
beer drinker complaining about corvids
amazing crows, organized a million times
more than sloppy kid runners on playground
“shoot ‘em cuz they wake me up so fucking earlier”

depoliticizing shoppers, skimmers of latte
smiling at fair trade foamy mustache
while wishing for more high rises
wanting more junk lined up for the
procession, cars, cute electric things
motorcycles, as the shopping is half a day

somewhere the seeds of capitalism are like
assassin genes, sleeping until brains accept
prions, the Mad Capitalist Disease
watch those downer triple Big Burgers
anything but looking up

tripping on a Steve Jobs’ Zionist app
loving Rachel and Ellen degenerating
capitalism’s leading lesbian ladies
somehow that Jon Leibowitz Stewart
clip on Samsung dumb-as-ass phone
more vital than two dozen swifts
better than Israel-sculpted drones

pet tricks and the tricks of celebrities
Pandora and Flickr, instantaneous
boredom, app hunting inanity
these cretins laugh when I look
at goshawks near sewage ponds
scoff at red-tail hawks dive bombing bridges
over Portland

what’s the big deal, since this is
our ecosystem . . . these flappers
of the Coding genome insist
business and computers have
eco-logical systems
teary eyed with another web net orgasm
of marketing the nothingness of nothing

flickers can’t be woodpeckers
in the diode-capacitor-ROM world
they flow into, like the wafers
they dream of, the Internet of Things
their eco-system, birds be damned
goddamned sea gulls delayed flight
to Alaska

someone mentions some blip from
TV, bald eagles returning like
gangbusters, DDT pushed to the Third
World, bald eagles also the turbine
eliminators, crashed Boeing nose
buried in wetland

Canada geese and mergansers shitting
while lost white species, men with no
lips, High Fructose Dolls signing in
looking for news on their demise
24/7 while buzzards slipstream
waiting for boys and girls to
collapse after all that surfing

there is that taste of sulfur
burning gristle, aromatics  settling
deep within future COPD life specimens
GIS mapping best vegan food
the hippest place to shop hemp

nothing about the birds re-shifting,
brown pelicans spotted on Walmart tanker
gunwales, the entire mess of super-tankers
the awe stricken  iPhone snaps
while osprey dig into Columbia
River four-pound salmon
while brown eagle brushes cottonwoods
the Homo Sapiens juggles dumb phone
scrolls for messages, snaps Wal-Mart and ADM
tankers spewing, unimaginable shots
in the middle of nowhere

egrets eat freshwater crabs
buzzards by the dozen lift
but the news of the day
distracted species, eyeballs glued
to palm-sized screen
that holds sway

is it a political ecosystem
marketing the mess that is small
screen i-Generation buyers
consumers and agnostic
historians, only celebrities
deserve second thought
while flamingos and ostriches
gather in parks, nothing to worry
about, save for the feral children
still gathering woolly caterpillars
still poking sticks in holes
still waiting for frogs to be scooped up
by star gazers, birds, a political animal
these days of the eroding i-Generation

moving like penguins at a duck shoot
waiting for nano-computers from
proctologists working with marketers

the end is really bending over
three-d generated nano-drones
fluttering about soured heart valves
nothing in the heavens, the sky
filled with Zionist drones, each
square kilometer lifted by Robo-Bees
Robot robins
spreading the new ecosystem
diodes and digital drives
the heart of the matter

Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.