Condolences to Gaea

By Carlos Arroyo Schmidt

As our planet burns, people starve and species suffer extinction at an alarming rate, should we relegate ourselves as watchers, powerless to stave ignorance and greed’s insistent clamouring for more? Condolences to Gaea is a poet’s expression protesting the mindless, violent, selfish, often religious rationale for self over the wellbeing of our planet’s countless, marvellous inhabitants. The thematic arc encompasses paeans to those wonderful people recognizing Mankind’s imperative to intelligently address life’s accelerating demise and includes introspective musings by an author vacillating between dire pessimism and joyful optimism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398443853

Carlos Arroyo Schmidt

The author is a construction worker, lab tech, anthropologist, and scuba diver possessing sundry interests, none more important than an observer of humanity's many institutions, habits, and foibles.

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Carlos Arroyo Schmidt 2022

The right of Carlos Arroyo Schmidt to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398443846 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398443853 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

A Missing Gene

Expression’s passions, too alive

Too much hot blood in hands, minds, eyes

Clawing confining, weighty skin

Leaping upward, naked notions

Lighter than air inspirations

Hoping to escape the mundane

Rituals of quid pro quo life

With nothing to offer but smiles

Never enough, this wayward search

Lightly touching, too light to harm

Alighting for joyful moments

Before boredom’s weary behest

Wondering why long wandering

Decries fate’s whispered maunderings

To settle and need common wants

So that others can plainly see

Sharing a common jealousy

Familiar compulsions that bind

Society’s expectations

Those hollow fruits starving my soul

Those interminable tastings

Dreaming surfeit for so many

A lifetime’s needful foraging

Compels novelty’s wanderlust

Why can’t I find that unique kind

That puts me in mind of staying?

A Place for Us

Beige, void minds dreading colour

Declaring anathema

Bide craven ’midst detritus

Meant to confound us

Vendors’ cliché syllabus

Tomes speak of dimming the sun

Their sleeting hate vaporized

A pure, loving green fire heals

A sure, azure sky reigns

Where status struggles in vain

’Gainst living urges, greed’s bane

Never too late to save, try

A billion year’s instruction

Evolution’s inventions

Kenning life’s abiding joy

Aged Involvements

They had their moment back when time did not threaten

When stacking stones, all manner adult things was drear

Blood moved quicker

Ideas flickered

Firing novae

Wide-eyed discovery

The stuff of creation

Brazen exploration

Peer pressure courageous

Passionate, capricious

Future’s dreaming

Status scheming

Child’s legacy

Temperate gravity

Measured exuberance

An ending’s imminence

Bought slave’s obedience

‘Midst dullards’ midden heaps

Following stylish sheep

Instead of fighting it, they surrender to it

Droning catechisms of listed possessions

To those far, near

We all must hear

Wannabe and envy

Their weighty property

Recounting their haute couture lives ad nauseam

Sclerotic minds contriving their mythic stature

Hiding behind

Façade’s brittle armour

Stodgy, empty

Their passing most timely

And unremarkable