Article voiceover
Death is a bad smell
as I cross the parking lot A life I do not interrogate A being I do not consider Death is a minor annoyance on my walk from the transportation device that likely squashed it to the department store that destroyed its habitat Death surrounds me it’s ugly but it's all I can see An ocean of impermeable concrete An economy of extraction (holy lands ground down for parts vast fields of ancient stumps) all so normalized and I so inculcated that I can’t imagine any other way Death fills the air fills my lungs wildfires in the spring in the humid northeast A whole new season every year Death is carefully applied by men in backpacks with wands to any life insolencing through cracks any green despoiling grey Death sentenced too to humans struggling through cracks seeking refuge, sanctuary in a world with no home Death is hurled over fences neighbor to neighbor Death unleashed in symbolic barrage "we can Death as hard as you" Death is stockpiled (combatants in a vat of gasoline crowing about match collections) Death distilled into single devices so diabolic they require no launch (detonate anywhere destroy life everywhere) Death receives sanctuary in a dome over our planet long arms battering energy webs as we seek refuge in the fossil-swathed interiors where Death nurses where Death weans and yes Death clears way for new life but not ours