A child (that was me), stared outside his windows and looked

and looked at the decadent 2000s. Moral carelessness and placing emphasis on

the wrong things (like visceral lies) mask it all, they wrap and constrict and

cling, like a stray anaconda finding a hungry child. We all know what happens next.

Extravagance and imperialism go up in flames and Ponzi schemes, like diamonds.

Because, of course, only diamonds can destroy other diamonds.

A child (that was me), looked at the tall white castles and skyscrapers that crumbled down like broken glass on another usual crisp autumn morning (or something like that...)

An apparition of smoke that is playful, prancing and hiding us from its over-glorified truth.

We talk in our classes about nature, but we never see it.

We go outside to talk about animals and the pesky environment, but there’s a road running right

by us, so the message is clearly and carelessly lost. We all moved on like a gust of wind, so swift

it hurt even the orchid-like bullies and delicate teachers, reminiscent of flowers on a grave.

We become leaves in a painful autumn, crinkly, like the ones you crush tragically beneath your

new sneakers for school and Sunday best.

A child (that was me), played with dolls inside the class, inside a room, inside a house.

The teachers call me over: ask me what’s wrong. I say, “Nothing.” They say:

“Then why were you playing with girl toys?”

I lay down on the germ-infested carpet that screams out the colors and numbers,

I close my eyes for our nap but I can’t sleep, so I won’t.

A child (that was me) opens his eyes to a grown-up world; it’s the 2010s now and things are--

Global warming and the ephemerality of nature and refugees,

terrorists, Great Recession, -Gates, scandal, terror, oppression, knives, bombs, and arms races.

And the child (this is me) asks himself:

Is this Nature?