Dust devils in this jungle make me cough.
The last tapir, and I, and an angry sunburned spider,
count tree stumps and watch topsoil blowing off.
The spider sighs, and tries, but fails, to hide her
sadness. She says, ‘They have made this Hell.
to get “rich” quick. Who would have given odds
that men could do the Devil’s work so well?’
She does the spider dance that calls small gods.

Heat-stress cracked dirt shivers. Thunder rumbles.
‘No clouds,’ the tapir says. ‘No chance of rain.’
Small gods appear. A duo. The fat one grumbles,
‘Man’s gone too far’. The thin one says, ‘Again!’

He claimed that life was a simile, like a headlight.

These small gods are essentially one schtick cronies.
In addition to immortality and teleportation
each has a single power which alone is
a specific gift of material mutation.

The fat small god whose name translates as Fuel
decrees from now no drop of gasoline
or similar will burn. Each molecule
will turn into water for this arid scene.

The thin small god says, ‘I ban ammunition.
From now gunpowder transmutes into sand.
Men here will be in the same condition
as the other creatures, with their firearms banned.

We cut down our Sequoias to make wood chips
that we sell as mulch for garden ornamentals.
Because we can. We watch the rats leave our ships
to board the barges of the Orientals.
The rats go east like our jobs did. No, we sent those
like now we send our forests, for quick profits.
We’ll have nothing left to lose soon, just our souls.