I Squashed a Fly
I killed a spider
I squashed a fly.
I not only squashed
I smashed, bashed
crushed, flushed
ended, dead-ended
demolished, abolished
One spider.
One fly.
Why?
It's not that they threatened
my family, my kin,
wanted to tear down the house
I'm in.
Mercy!
Guess I had none.
Ruth
less, it seems
except in dreams.
In dreams I am
sublime
divine
forever mind
ing
my passions
my views.
I used to call us Newanderthals
Perhaps not so new, after all
Neanderthals made hands
On walls(5)
They pictured
They imagined
They befriended
us.
They exist no more.
We massacred them.(1)
We were the first
at genocide
the worst
at empathy.
We could not share
care
be aware
that others
had brothers
sisters, and more.
Now we build
human-nots
robots
programmed to be exactly
like us.
The nobots
will kill on command
(or even without)
with no remorse
no source
of guilt
no fear of being
named or blamed.
I'm not saying
STOP
(I think).
I'm saying stop
AND
think.
Before we murder a spider
a fly
an other
a brother
a sister
and more.
Before we despoil the ocean's shore
and tarnish our legacy
at its core.
In Zen they ask
"Show me the face you had
before"
Before your parents.(2)
Neanderthals are forever gone.
No one will know the face they had
Before.
Should I still continue
to kill a spider,
to squash a fly?
Should I ask the researchers
Why oh why
are you plunging forward
so you and I
may one day be squashed
like a spider, a fly?
Is the problem really the spider? The fly?
Or is the problem you
And I?(4)
(1) A new study
indicates that we and the neanderthals may in fact have co-existed for longer than previously thought. But we still kill spiders, and we still swat flies. Another
take on long-range remote controlled weaponry is provided in this New York Times
article. The urge to kill, the addiction to murder, has not changed. The DNA of warring still consumes our species.
(2) Buddhist Koan
(3) An article from the Guardian newspaper reveals the dramatic decline in the insect population worldwide.
(4) Are we incurable? Unmanageable? Ungovernable? Was Winston Churchill right when he said, "Democracy is the worst kind of government, except for all the others"? Does control necessitate tyranny or autocracy? See, for example, the type of attitude adaptation being used in a park in Amsterdam. Would that work in the U.S.?
(5)A new study indicates that the earliest handprints may in fact have been created by children roughly 200,000 years ago in Tibet, possibly neanderthal or denisovan.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2021
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