[Newspoetry] Unlikely Realities: Talked to Death

[DL Emerick]

Unlikely Realities: Talked to Death
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/041607EB.shtml

Bee populations dying, in pandemic?

Nope.  No pandemic here.
Pandemic requires a viral agent,
According to a Greek spin,
Meaning simply "all-the-people",
For we add "epidemic" to "pandemic",
Where "epi" is "upon" the-people,
(though a note says, casually,
Analogically, social "diseases" may be convergent, too -
And points off to neologism "syndemic").

Why are the bees dying?
Mass suicide?  No.
A global war, of bees?  No.

It's simpler, possibly.
A radiation weapon -
Wielded by another species:
The chatty cell-phone.

You talk, bees die.
You talk, bees die, crops fail, you die.
You talk, you die.

They say ancient Babylon fell because, after hundreds of years of irrigating the
soils, to increase agricultural yields, the ground become too salty, from
minerals left behind by the nurturing waters.

They say ancient Israel died when the slopes of Lebanon, denuded of Cedars, used
in building the great Temple, eroded into dust and mud, polluting Israeli waters
with the salts of the Earth, leeched by the rains from the bare slopes.

They say ancient Rome died when the lead pipes of the plumbing used in the homes
of the elites for water poisoned the brains, if not the minds, of the ruling
circles, leaving only idiots to run the empire.

Every great civilization collapses and dies, from some incidental effect of the
way it chooses to live, perhaps.  How ironic that the world should die as a
by-product of wanting to talk, all the time, instantly and immediately, here and
now, with each other, to say nothing at all important, generally.

That does give me a buzz.