The Disappearance of the Flies

      " 'Secular humanist' - it almost sounds like mockery."
                          - Overheard at a climatology conference 


So, the word’s finally out:

I am the world's Nazi,
and you are my Jews.

Not that I hate you absolutely –

on the contrary, I enjoy you,
for the most part;

those of you I cannot eat

or flog into subservience,

to help or amuse me, decorate my

upscale live-work high-end design space

now – or by no later than the end of next quarter –

are just in the way,

as I thrust ahead

to glory, sweet power,

and a suffocating wealth

built on the dependable human delight

in the enchanted moment of acquisition.

I’ve got you,

I’ve got the world.

It is no longer God’s or nature’s;

it is mine,

I own you,

I who hate to have and love to get.

There was once a despot

whose footsteps bloodied his time.

After he had conquered the world,

bored with his possessions,

he decided to destroy them:

slaughtered his slaves, his women, his sycophants,

sent his soldiers to the ends of his empire

to pillage and sack it, out of boredom and rage

that he had no more worlds to conquer.

He burned his own palaces to the ground.

In a raging drunk one night,

he broke his neck in a ditch.

The peasants crept up to his filthy, stinking body,

the one that had conquered the world,

and watched the flies flickering over it.

There are no peasants tomorrow.

There are no flies.