"Dignified" Extinction
I've been working on about six new poems recently, and all of them seem to fit a particular theme: namely they're all blunt and angry screeds that have rough meter and and lots of unconventional rhyme... I think this means that I may have entered one of those mystical "artistic periods". Perhaps this is my "Angry Screed Poems" period, as I've already had my Teen Angst, Atmospheric, Wildlife, and Absurdity periods. :P As for this one, it's my attempt at "kicking at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight", with regards to some of the new (and in my opinion sick and dangerous) ideas about wildlife "conservation", which are gaining a great deal of traction and popularity of late. I haven't named any names in this piece (except in one particular case), simply for legal reasons, but anyone with basic Google-Fu skills can figure out for themselves the parties I may be referring to...
“Dignified” Extinction - © 2012 by Trevor Patrick
The mystery of the snow leopard in the Himalaya peaks,
And the Florida Panther that hunts through the ’glades,
The ponderous jaguar revered by the Mayans,
And the leopard hiding in the leafy shade.
The majestic lion, who patrols the savannah,
And the tiger, who stalks the long grass,
Soon will disappear from their ancestral homes,
And fade into the mists of the past.
And though they’re the top predators, other species will follow,
A cascade failure of Nature from pole to pole.
A sterile future of nothingness,
Is the inevitability that truly lies in store.
There once was a time, where we thought we might save them,
In safari parks or in zoos,
And to ensure we had a large enough and viable population,
We’d need the private sector too.
For the plain truth is that we save what we love,
And we love what we see and understand.
Thus, the farther away and more abstract it is,
The less we’re motivated to actually give a damn.
But lately it seems there’s a new view,
That wild animals should only be saved in the ‘wild’.
That their so-called ‘freedom’ is more precious than life itself,
And in ‘captive slavery’, their beauty is defiled.
Of course, such viewpoints make some powerful assumptions,
That these creatures see a captive life the way that we do,
That every one rages against their confining walls,
And that they’d rather die than be in a zoo.
‘Wild animals should be wild!’ How often we’ve heard that?
Even if there’s no real wilderness left,
So these newly-enlightened people, in their infinite wisdom,
Believe that animals’ only hope of freedom is in death.
Ragnar Redbeard said in ‘Might is Right’, and I think he’s spot on the money,
That all great truths are hard and bitter, but lies are sweeter than honey.
It’s an emotional argument through and through,
To conflate slavery with Zoological Parks,
To never see them as storehouses of biological diversity,
Or the modern equivalent of a Biblical ark.
And they’ll have you believe we should surrender to the idea,
That if we can only save them in zoos…
Then letting them slip into so-called ‘Dignified Extinction’,
Is by far the most ethical thing to do.
Yes, ‘Dignified Extinction’-now there’s an oxymoron,
Just like ‘frozen steam’ or ‘compassionate rape’.
With the added bonus of containing the even bigger cognitive dissonance,
Of giving animals the freedom for you to decide their fate!
And the folks, who have an agenda of separating humans from nature,
Know that demonising animal ownership’s the first essential step,
And to stigmatise as deviant, those who identify with exotic species,
Was the perfect spot for the thin end of the wedge.
We’ve entered a brave new world of intellectual laziness,
Where most folks are wilfully blind,
And we’re finding out the hard way, that the greatest cruelties are done,
By those, who think that they’re being kind.
We’ve become a culture that worships death,
And has strayed far from the beauty of life,
Not long ago, it was ‘preserve the wilderness’,
And ‘who hears when animals cry?’
So slowly but surely, these falsehoods have infected the public,
And spread like a cancerous meme.
Like every radical agenda, it started with propaganda,
And lies so big they were utterly obscene.
It wasn’t all that difficult; just take a few prejudices,
And a few people with big cats being stupid or reckless,
Then suddenly every captive tiger was eating your children,
And being kept in Harlem apartments by the idiotic and feckless.
And all the sick jokes about Roy Horn: a fruit turned into a vegetable,
Courtesy of his buddy Montecore,
And all the cubs that were being killed when they were too big for photo shoots,
And can’t you hear Truck-Stop Tony’s sad, sad roars?
And the ‘canned hunts’ moral panic-now that was a good one!
Almost as good as 7,000 tigers in Texas.
And the gullible people, who bought into those lies,
And scream for legal protection from the fears that might vex us.
We’re living in a time where hypocrisy’s become a virtue,
It’s ‘do as I say and never as I do,’
And logical argumentation’s given way to shrill sloganeering,
And ‘infotainment’ sound-bites are what passes for the news.
You’ve proven beautifully adapted to this brand new reality,
’Cause you’ve certainly mastered the sloganeering art,
I’m constantly reminded of: ‘four legs good, two legs baaaaaaad’,
Just like George Orwell wrote in ‘Animal Farm’.
“There’s no such thing as ‘responsible’ big cat ownership!’”
Just like there’s no way to responsibly own a gun.
And you’ve made offensive and dirty the term: ‘captive conservation’,
And summarily decided every effort’s finished before it’s begun.
You’ve remade your image more times than Madonna or Lady Gaga,
And nothing you do or say seems to stick for long,
And even the folks who know where all the figurative bodies are buried,
You just jump up and down and scream and shout that they’re wrong.
But there’s also constant dread about how ruthless you can be,
With your online Pinkerton army that never sleeps,
Who’ll throw themselves in front of you to take any ideological bullet,
And let themselves be sacrificed and fleeced like sheep.
And the animal rights groups like HSUS and PeTA were shocked,
’Cause you’ve proven you’re the scrappiest little bulldog bitch on the block,
More ban laws passed in a single decade than they’ve achieved in thirty years,
You said: ‘to Hell with people’s better nature’, and you played upon their fears.
And the ‘conservation’ industry is like powerful bug spray,
In that it finds new ways to kill wildlife dead,
So the ‘charity’ executives can keep driving their Bentleys and Porsches,
And sipping Cristal in their private jets.
And the burgeoning populations of the poor and desperate,
Subsume the natural world to fulfil their growing needs,
But the wealthy of the West, who are blessed with so much,
Sacrifice Nature on the altar of greed.
Manage them to extinction within twenty years,
For they’re better dead than bred,
And a captive animal’s a dead animal, useless for conservation,
And snipped out of Nature’s web.
Neuter the studs for subspecies-purity eugenics,
On the remote chance they could accidentally breed,
And the sad, fat males; sad and flat under their tails,
Instead of carrying the proud potency of their seed.
For a captive male tiger is never truly out of the gene pool,
Just so long as he remains intact.
But you said they were useless, so you made them useless,
And turned your prejudice into fact.
But I’ll give you credit for a few things, though nobody else will,
And what do you think about that?
I’ve never come across anyone, who can more masterfully manipulate,
People’s instinctive fear of predatory cats.
And you’ve saturated the Internet and the media with your message,
In ways that would make most corporate executives drool,
And you completely grok much better than nearly anyone alive,
That there’s an endless supply of gullible fools.
But sometimes I think you’re not really about saving the planet,
So much as sitting back and watching it burn,
Behaving as if you’re the last generation, not caring for those who’ll live here,
Long after you’re feeding the worms.
And what will those future folks think of your decision,
To exterminate what could have been saved?
And there won’t even be memories of the beauty you knew,
And genocidally sent to the grave.
And I’m sure they’ll take comfort in their own ‘dignified extinction’,
Because you know eventual destruction’s our lot.
But you’ll leave a powerful lesson in the banality of evil,
And your insatiable urge to play God.
So please explain what’s so dignified about extinction,
So those whom you’re exterminating would understand,
And how could extermination-oops, I mean ‘extinction’, somehow be ‘managed’,
And how you could justify your pogrom as a so-called ‘Twenty-Year Plan’?
But there’s an even deeper question I’d ask you if I had the chance,
One thing I’d like to know the real truth of,
That’s: how did it become possible for you to wrap your head around,
Exterminating those, whom you claim that you love?
“Dignified” Extinction - © 2012 by Trevor Patrick
The mystery of the snow leopard in the Himalaya peaks,
And the Florida Panther that hunts through the ’glades,
The ponderous jaguar revered by the Mayans,
And the leopard hiding in the leafy shade.
The majestic lion, who patrols the savannah,
And the tiger, who stalks the long grass,
Soon will disappear from their ancestral homes,
And fade into the mists of the past.
And though they’re the top predators, other species will follow,
A cascade failure of Nature from pole to pole.
A sterile future of nothingness,
Is the inevitability that truly lies in store.
There once was a time, where we thought we might save them,
In safari parks or in zoos,
And to ensure we had a large enough and viable population,
We’d need the private sector too.
For the plain truth is that we save what we love,
And we love what we see and understand.
Thus, the farther away and more abstract it is,
The less we’re motivated to actually give a damn.
But lately it seems there’s a new view,
That wild animals should only be saved in the ‘wild’.
That their so-called ‘freedom’ is more precious than life itself,
And in ‘captive slavery’, their beauty is defiled.
Of course, such viewpoints make some powerful assumptions,
That these creatures see a captive life the way that we do,
That every one rages against their confining walls,
And that they’d rather die than be in a zoo.
‘Wild animals should be wild!’ How often we’ve heard that?
Even if there’s no real wilderness left,
So these newly-enlightened people, in their infinite wisdom,
Believe that animals’ only hope of freedom is in death.
Ragnar Redbeard said in ‘Might is Right’, and I think he’s spot on the money,
That all great truths are hard and bitter, but lies are sweeter than honey.
It’s an emotional argument through and through,
To conflate slavery with Zoological Parks,
To never see them as storehouses of biological diversity,
Or the modern equivalent of a Biblical ark.
And they’ll have you believe we should surrender to the idea,
That if we can only save them in zoos…
Then letting them slip into so-called ‘Dignified Extinction’,
Is by far the most ethical thing to do.
Yes, ‘Dignified Extinction’-now there’s an oxymoron,
Just like ‘frozen steam’ or ‘compassionate rape’.
With the added bonus of containing the even bigger cognitive dissonance,
Of giving animals the freedom for you to decide their fate!
And the folks, who have an agenda of separating humans from nature,
Know that demonising animal ownership’s the first essential step,
And to stigmatise as deviant, those who identify with exotic species,
Was the perfect spot for the thin end of the wedge.
We’ve entered a brave new world of intellectual laziness,
Where most folks are wilfully blind,
And we’re finding out the hard way, that the greatest cruelties are done,
By those, who think that they’re being kind.
We’ve become a culture that worships death,
And has strayed far from the beauty of life,
Not long ago, it was ‘preserve the wilderness’,
And ‘who hears when animals cry?’
So slowly but surely, these falsehoods have infected the public,
And spread like a cancerous meme.
Like every radical agenda, it started with propaganda,
And lies so big they were utterly obscene.
It wasn’t all that difficult; just take a few prejudices,
And a few people with big cats being stupid or reckless,
Then suddenly every captive tiger was eating your children,
And being kept in Harlem apartments by the idiotic and feckless.
And all the sick jokes about Roy Horn: a fruit turned into a vegetable,
Courtesy of his buddy Montecore,
And all the cubs that were being killed when they were too big for photo shoots,
And can’t you hear Truck-Stop Tony’s sad, sad roars?
And the ‘canned hunts’ moral panic-now that was a good one!
Almost as good as 7,000 tigers in Texas.
And the gullible people, who bought into those lies,
And scream for legal protection from the fears that might vex us.
We’re living in a time where hypocrisy’s become a virtue,
It’s ‘do as I say and never as I do,’
And logical argumentation’s given way to shrill sloganeering,
And ‘infotainment’ sound-bites are what passes for the news.
You’ve proven beautifully adapted to this brand new reality,
’Cause you’ve certainly mastered the sloganeering art,
I’m constantly reminded of: ‘four legs good, two legs baaaaaaad’,
Just like George Orwell wrote in ‘Animal Farm’.
“There’s no such thing as ‘responsible’ big cat ownership!’”
Just like there’s no way to responsibly own a gun.
And you’ve made offensive and dirty the term: ‘captive conservation’,
And summarily decided every effort’s finished before it’s begun.
You’ve remade your image more times than Madonna or Lady Gaga,
And nothing you do or say seems to stick for long,
And even the folks who know where all the figurative bodies are buried,
You just jump up and down and scream and shout that they’re wrong.
But there’s also constant dread about how ruthless you can be,
With your online Pinkerton army that never sleeps,
Who’ll throw themselves in front of you to take any ideological bullet,
And let themselves be sacrificed and fleeced like sheep.
And the animal rights groups like HSUS and PeTA were shocked,
’Cause you’ve proven you’re the scrappiest little bulldog bitch on the block,
More ban laws passed in a single decade than they’ve achieved in thirty years,
You said: ‘to Hell with people’s better nature’, and you played upon their fears.
And the ‘conservation’ industry is like powerful bug spray,
In that it finds new ways to kill wildlife dead,
So the ‘charity’ executives can keep driving their Bentleys and Porsches,
And sipping Cristal in their private jets.
And the burgeoning populations of the poor and desperate,
Subsume the natural world to fulfil their growing needs,
But the wealthy of the West, who are blessed with so much,
Sacrifice Nature on the altar of greed.
Manage them to extinction within twenty years,
For they’re better dead than bred,
And a captive animal’s a dead animal, useless for conservation,
And snipped out of Nature’s web.
Neuter the studs for subspecies-purity eugenics,
On the remote chance they could accidentally breed,
And the sad, fat males; sad and flat under their tails,
Instead of carrying the proud potency of their seed.
For a captive male tiger is never truly out of the gene pool,
Just so long as he remains intact.
But you said they were useless, so you made them useless,
And turned your prejudice into fact.
But I’ll give you credit for a few things, though nobody else will,
And what do you think about that?
I’ve never come across anyone, who can more masterfully manipulate,
People’s instinctive fear of predatory cats.
And you’ve saturated the Internet and the media with your message,
In ways that would make most corporate executives drool,
And you completely grok much better than nearly anyone alive,
That there’s an endless supply of gullible fools.
But sometimes I think you’re not really about saving the planet,
So much as sitting back and watching it burn,
Behaving as if you’re the last generation, not caring for those who’ll live here,
Long after you’re feeding the worms.
And what will those future folks think of your decision,
To exterminate what could have been saved?
And there won’t even be memories of the beauty you knew,
And genocidally sent to the grave.
And I’m sure they’ll take comfort in their own ‘dignified extinction’,
Because you know eventual destruction’s our lot.
But you’ll leave a powerful lesson in the banality of evil,
And your insatiable urge to play God.
So please explain what’s so dignified about extinction,
So those whom you’re exterminating would understand,
And how could extermination-oops, I mean ‘extinction’, somehow be ‘managed’,
And how you could justify your pogrom as a so-called ‘Twenty-Year Plan’?
But there’s an even deeper question I’d ask you if I had the chance,
One thing I’d like to know the real truth of,
That’s: how did it become possible for you to wrap your head around,
Exterminating those, whom you claim that you love?