Hush, Humans

by ADRIE KUSSEROW

You can finally let it all go,
the Anthropocene, Technocene, Thermocene,
Capitalocene, whatever it will be called.

Up north, glaciers drip into Inuit trailers,
bedsheets block the overeager sun.
Gangs of bony polar bears 
roam settlements on lockdown.

What’s done is done. For once, stop moving.
Let yourself be still as the arctic blue. 

Don’t tell me you didn’t get a bit edgy, 
when capitalism tossed its blonde hair cockily aside, 
its profit settling like dandruff on Earth’s floor. 

Don’t tell me you didn’t squirm, when giant waves of wealth 
rose up, hooded, lashing the beaches, 
then skittering away, leaving tiny husks and exoskeletons of greed,
(tampons for tweens, K-cups, tooth floss, vape coils, hair clips), 
all of them glistening so beautifully, mother seagulls 
drop them like jewels
into their young’s raw squawk. 

Surely you knew something was out of balance, 
when you looked up from your taxi,
into the beehives of Marriotts, Hyatts, and Hiltons— 
bulging matriarchs that lodge themselves 
high above the composting slums,  
beneath them the rickshaws picking 
their way through piles of plastic 
like the praying mantis you saw on TV.

Surely you wondered how long you could stay
at the top of the food chain
when monkeys took over the markets, 
stealing ripe fruit and warm infants alike.

When dusk sheepishly comes to your cities,
gets swallowed by your neon blaze,
when ten billion lights blanket the dark
and the ego feels giddy and high,
let go, right there, in that exact spot. 

Soon enough a moody storm 
will pluck you off like dog hair from the black night of her sweater. 
Let yourself float into the galaxy 
where you came from. 

Don’t tell me you never once longed for
your own oblivion.

I promise it won’t hurt, to let yourself fade,
Oddly enough, nothing you have ever experienced
under evolution’s rule will ever feel this good.

You only have to be ready to crouch, to be humble.
I promise, nothing,
no possible permutation of carbon and hydrogen 
we now call humans, 
will ever be this exhausting 
again.