Poem: Thrown-out Unused

our man-made world defines us by our lack,
bruises and abuses us with it,
Works to pump desire in like an anechoic vacuum.

We are abraded by expensive impressions of affluence.
The fear of poverty -- seeing the faces but not the eye of the people in our glossy magazines, their tears, their endless hurt --
by rote we recite what we know of the one-step-away precipice.
(There but by ____ go I)
the fence that became a wall that became a cliff that we climbed up on to see
we got dizzy vertigo
from the chasm
(just one step back)

we wonder at a planet that shudders under the weight of its humanity
we call sin consequence
and try to pass it off as inconsequential
to spin like selfish hurricanes.