"My Lover, Monsanto" and Other Poems

My Lover, Monsanto

 My lover, Monsanto,who owns the gardenwho does me wellby choosing the seeds,is out in the fields,sweeping the deadawayso that our lovecan grow some more.Who owns the garden?my lover, Monsanto,who is out in the fieldspoisoning the soilso the food will grow.Who does me well?my lover Monsanto of course,who is out in the fieldsas I lie here in waitingfor the August windsto blow in the September harvest.“By choosing the seeds,”my lover Monsanto tells me,“we take the soil by force,grow gigantic vegetables,and feed the entire world.”Out in the fields still,my lover Monsanto makes me waitin our chambers, naked and readyto ripen, fall, and be carried,just like the crop,by the strong handsthat facilitate the harvester.“Sweeping the dead away,”my lover Monsanto tells me,“is easier after the sunhas cooked the bodies downto a skin so thinthat even the slightest windcould take them awayif it wanted to.”“So that our love can grow some more,”he tells me, stuffing my mouthwith his freshly washed broccoli.“So that our love can grow some more,”I echo back, as I devour his corn,The very thing that replacedthe prairie milkweed,and emptied the skiesof nearly every, last monarch. [divide style="2"]

Hey You, Cartographer!

 Hey you! Youwith the paper, pencils, and rulers,You with the simplelines of reasonYes, you!You claim to know me,claim to love me,How?You’ve taken it all:my watery skin, my loamy lungs,the labor and livesof my lovers,even the bloody sand, I neverexpected that one,but there you go,nevermind my wheezing,nevermind my overheating heart:you’ve taken what’s yours,supposedly God givenExcept —You left the rotting floor boardsof your abandoned,temporary homes,left your crumblingsaw mills and oil pipelines,left the pus-filled bodiesof buffalo beneath my plains,and pelicans across my beaches.You also,in your haste to claim it allbefore some imaginary other does,desert dust,the broken bones of ancestors,and every last fault line –Oh, how you must hate them,those lines that won’tgive in to the image of perfectionyou and your bossesso desire to make.I will never be the youyou have of me in your mind.We are like star-crossed lovers,but you know how those storiesalways end.And so, I have decided it’s time,time to catapult you and your bosses.This romance was never goodfor either of us anyway.I entered it naivelythinking you had all of our bestinterests in mind.I leave you much wiser,with my fault lines displayed proudlyfor everyone to see. [divide style="2"]

The Remains – December 14^th, 2003

 After they captured,and took him away to be shavedsomewhere near Baghdad,for a moment many in the worldbelieved the lies behind the warhas suddenly become truths.Somehow, it didn’t matterthat the dead sunflowers and broken farm equipmentlay scattered beneath a cloudy sky.Or that the mud bricked bedroomthe man had slept in while in hidingwas filled with the productsof fading empires:Dove, Lipton, Raid, AK-47, U.S. dollars.No, it didn’t seem to faze the believers,the way the old man’s Qur’anand a poster of Noah’s Arkremained alongside dirty blankets,fluorescent strip lights,and even a half finishedtomato salad.All of this was mere evidenceof justice finally had,nevermind the continuing stream of bombsdropping from the clouds above,or the occasional waftof bloody and rotting remainscoming from the ground below -what mattered was the strandsof the old man’s scraggly, gray beardscattered across the floor,a sign of to so many of good things to come. Nathan G. Thompson is an activist, writer, and lover of the Earth from St. Paul, Minnesota. A long time member of Clouds in Water Zen Center, he received the dharma name Tokugo (Devotion to Enlightenment) in 2008. He is the author of the spiritual and social justice blog Dangerous Harvests, and has written articles for a variety of online and print publications, including a regular column at the webzine Life as a Human.