Easy to blame the world’s ills

on a single

cause: godliness or godlessness

tolerance or tyrants

to look for a reason divine or natural

but regardless,

the fire comes sweeping over the hills.

Insanity even

of a “fire season”

let alone when

they blend into one

without end

Earth scrubbing furiously

at the irritation on her skin.

Certainly eternal life is a nice thought

but real life is just rot

like pharaohs dying

with the most playthings

fully poseable worshippers

kneeling before unopposable

kings.

Let us bury that curse back underground

a mass grave of all our Barbies

interred in a pyramid.

Polly Pocket’s perfect microcosm

like a clamshell

of birth-control placebo pills

and a G.I. Joe with

100 confirmed kills.

You can play homemaker

or warmonger

human lifeswitch, off or on.

You can be the toy or the doll

but never in control.

You can seek to be fulfilled

by something natural

or divine

but never within your own mind.

Inject direct

the petroleum of salvation

forever chemicals for

forever skin.

Rubber garden guarded by the weapons

of heaven

but the sword of faith

started the blaze

in the first place.

Plastic paradise awaits

inside the planned community’s gates

and still

the fire comes sweeping over the hills.