The Anthropocene is cancer

Planet Earth, 1972

The Anthropocene

is cancer on the planet: 

people are everywhere,

from suburbia to homeless, and in a crowded

Indian street someone yelling

"1.2 Billion!!", full of fervour

celebrating India's population

surpassing that of China;

while in Beijing tofu houses,

disintegrating apartment blocks,

begin to crumble as concrete mixed

with sand crumbles in your hand,

someone's always cutting corners

to increase profit;

it's all paper tiger here

on Planet Earth,

a papier maché society

of cities and cars and pollution; 

civilization founded on graft and grief,

and appearance always

over everything else,

there are just too many people

roaming the planet, scratching

out a living in dirt and sand,

dominion over animals, trees, insects,

birds, lakes and rivers, oceans and seas,

we're killing everything, extinction 

for the natural world,  we're killing birds

with windmill generators, while

off Long Island whales are dying

where windmills as tall 

as the Chrysler Building

stand ominous a mile off shore;

it's the Anthropocene cancer—

Stephen Spender: "The more

I am acquainted with my dog

the less I like humans."

Think of Detroit

where middle class people lived,

half the population uprooted,

moved to other cities,

suburbs, slums

or living on the side

of a road, a trailer park,

a Walmart parking lot,

from city life to homeless, city blocks

returned to weeds, sidewalks

crumbled, electricity

cut off, water mains broken

at 3 a.m., never repaired, 

the residual cancer

of too many people, it's become

hell on earth; the Anthropocene

is spreading, changing the planet

to a likeness of ourselves, people sleeping

in NYC subway cars, migrants

sprawled across two seats

legs spread open, and at the

bazaars in Thailand, hoards of

people out at night, they're all

eating roast chicken, steamed

rice, mountains of food, by morning

it's mountains of shit, piss river,

and buckets of semen, the same

in South America, just too many people

degrading the noosphere and changing

everything that once was,

the US border jammed with migrants

streaming across, here they come folks,

from all over the world, truckloads

of young men, people fleeing at night

for their lives, fleeing

across the border, people

from China and Cuba and Venezuela

and Africa; if you own anything

soon you'll own nothing, you'll

be homeless, soon you'll rent

everything, listening to second rate music

from America, even the fine arts

have been desecrated by people

with no talent, no vision,

no craft; in the future

everything you own 

you'll be able to carry

in case you have to run

like hell, across the fields,

through the darkened streets,

behind the razor wire, the barbed wire,

it's not going to get greener this way,

it used to be a lush world, green

with a blue sky overhead, a quiet river,

and then the rain came, the floods came,

the fires came, top soil blown away,

people came with their guns and greed,

the greed of people is only surpassed

by their ambition, not caring who dies,

they're maimed, arms amputated, minds

destroyed; the rich don't care about you,

they never did; the Green Belt desecrated

and monster houses constructed;

sold down the river, the big house,

the factory parking lot, the empty lot,

piss river a chemical soup,

the orange coloured sky,

earth that grows nothing,

you can dream all you want

you just can't take off this veil of tears;

believe nothing, the blight of the world

is too many people, soylent green;

the Anthropocene is cancer, 

wars and propaganda,

history a commentary on a commentary,

lies piled on lies, it's become unintelligible:

the Anthropocene

is cancer on the earth.