Poems by Colton Claye
“Elephant in the room”
By Colton Claye
Only man can elevate and degrade you
Putting the prod in Ganesha’s hand
To push us toward truth and good
And wield it in our own to beat you with
Training you to do what’s not natural to you
A lifetime confined
For our instant gratification
While we graze on cotton candy
And then become distracted by something inflatable for sale.
And while in the wild,
When you’re visiting the bones of your loved ones
You can’t call it grief you’re feeling
Or loss you are experiencing
But man can be that abstract.
And yet man can take you from the wild,
Keep you captive, pack you on a train,
Sell tickets and use you for amusement.
Only man can film your spirits being broken when you’re young
With whips and bull hooks
And then take a brush and carefully illustrate
A smiling clown to be put on a poster to promote it all
“Variation on ‘Variation on a theme by William Carlos Williams’”
By Colton Claye
This is just to say:
I have cleared
The forests
That were in
Your country
And which
you were probably
saving
for their
ability to
return water vapor to the atmosphere
And for
the beings
who made their home there
and for their
adeptness at
absorbing greenhouse gases
My bad.
Their pulp
and the monocrops growing in their place
were so instrumental in
providing me with
products that help me to
pass the time away
- Colton Claye lives in the United States and is a multimedia artist and an advocate for all beings and the planet we share.
By Colton Claye
Only man can elevate and degrade you
Putting the prod in Ganesha’s hand
To push us toward truth and good
And wield it in our own to beat you with
Training you to do what’s not natural to you
A lifetime confined
For our instant gratification
While we graze on cotton candy
And then become distracted by something inflatable for sale.
And while in the wild,
When you’re visiting the bones of your loved ones
You can’t call it grief you’re feeling
Or loss you are experiencing
But man can be that abstract.
And yet man can take you from the wild,
Keep you captive, pack you on a train,
Sell tickets and use you for amusement.
Only man can film your spirits being broken when you’re young
With whips and bull hooks
And then take a brush and carefully illustrate
A smiling clown to be put on a poster to promote it all
“Variation on ‘Variation on a theme by William Carlos Williams’”
By Colton Claye
This is just to say:
I have cleared
The forests
That were in
Your country
And which
you were probably
saving
for their
ability to
return water vapor to the atmosphere
And for
the beings
who made their home there
and for their
adeptness at
absorbing greenhouse gases
My bad.
Their pulp
and the monocrops growing in their place
were so instrumental in
providing me with
products that help me to
pass the time away
- Colton Claye lives in the United States and is a multimedia artist and an advocate for all beings and the planet we share.
Copyright©2022 by Colton Claye. All Rights Reserved.