Highest Eminence

O, pallid bat, wombat, scarlet tanager, marmoset and all the little animals of the world that spark wars and worldwide grief… Listen! ye who visit our leaders’ dreams at night and whisper all types of destructive and inhumane council — planting the seeds of war, hyper-capitalism, oppressive totalitarianism, and oligarchical greed that passes for socialism in practice — you are on notice.

All these bad ideas are planted by the cutest life forms on planet Earth.

While Attenborough gallivants about the world, here and there, galumphing with whirring machinery in order to show us this and that, and it’s import in the world; he fails to notice what the pretty beasties are doing to our leaders every night — and by extension, what they are doing to our world. OUR world.

O, low and cavorting bestiary! We shall hunt you out by deforestation, overfishing, pollution, over-development, and wildfire. You shall stop this chimeric invasion into our sleep and equanimity.

We are man! The highest and greatest link in the Great Chain of Being… (sorry, so sorry, dear father)…

We are man! Highest and greatest eminence on the Great Chain of Being here on earth!

We bend the elements to our will — the atoms do our bidding. We will move on beyond this planet, because this is what we do. Invade. Conquer. Control. Cleanse. Fold. Assimilate!

So, Red Panda; so, chin strap penguin; so, octopus; so, ring-tailed lemur — we bring you the Anthropocene, free of charge — but it will cost you dearly.

I pity the fool-animal earwigging it’s way into our beloved leader’s ear, in the dead of night, at the hour of fog.

You shall atone!

Then we will flay you, stuff you, catalog you, and put you up on display in a musty diorama — next to the heads of our enemies. Because this is what we are expert at. Because this is what we do.

“I admit, I don’t know a love that doesn’t
destroy. Last night while we slept,
a mouse drowned in the rice pot
I left soaking in the sink. I tried
to make a metaphor out of this…”

— Diannely Antigua / “Anniversary”