A smiling boy

enjoying a hamburger

with his father.

Contented cattle,

corn cud in their

bovine mouths.

Midwestern farmer sows

yellow golden seeds,

his tractor

stitching life into

the seams and folds of the land.

Holy water

teases green shoots-

Sprouting upward, outward,

reaching toward the shining

Light of God.

Majestic stalks of corn

Gobbled up by

Man’s Mad Machine,

spit out into

towering elevators of grain.

The food of the world’s masses,

the world’s livestock,

the world’s meat counters,

lies in wait

to meet its fate

At the hands and mouths

of the many.

A lone chemist

toils in his lab

late into

the German winter night.

The warmth and light

of a Bunsen burner

reflect off his bespectacled face.

Notes, scratches, scribbles–

Fevered output

of a driven brilliance.

Elation-

the kind that only comes

from intellectual conquest.

A breakthrough.

Pests and bugs of the world

shall no longer force

Famine upon the people,

Blight the farmers.

I have done it!

Millions of lives

are saved!

The lone scientist

feels lonely no more.

Connected now,

one of the few,

to billions of many.

The soldier

looks into the mirror,

Aghast at what

he was about to do.

Thoughts of family,

of laughing children,

of blown up comrades

and tortured souls.

Ripping his heart

and his head,

a tangled mess

of a man.

The Führer says

It must be done.

And with that…

a long deliberate walk

to the compound

from his barracks,

Time

seeming

to stand still…

Pulls on his gas mask.

The muted cries

of the people below

as they are herded

like cattle

into “the showers.”

Opening the canister

of Zyklon B

he can only hope

that God can forgive him,

that he can forgive

and live with himself,

Ever again.

The screams

Ring through his being.

An echo chamber

From hell itself.

The agri-giant lobbiest

Seethes into his cellphone:

“Screw these anti GMO hippies!

We need to turn this vote around!

We are helping billions of people,

Don’t they see?”

Somewhere today

A soldier’s soul

Turns in its grave hole.

The showers he gave those millions,

The Last Shower.

Somewhere today

A scientist’s soul

Turns in its grave hole.

His invention to save

The world morphed.

Killing millions,

Poisoning the water,

The soil.

Spawn to a new Matrix-

Genetically Modified Food.

Somewhere today

A boy enjoys a hamburger with his father.

Neither of them,

Quite grasping,

Where they stand in this Matrix.

The boy,

The cow,

The chemist,

The soldier,

The lobbiest…

You, God, the Great Mother.

Helping? Hurting?

What have we done?