TREES

The more I look at and think about trees,

The more disgusted I become!

Trees may appear beautiful and noble to some people,

Mostly country-dwellers,

But to me they are ugly and ignoble

Because indicative of tyranny and exploitation,

The leaves so many slaves of the trunk and branches

Of the tree-proper, feeding it

With energy from the sun and moisture from the air,

Leaves sucked dry by the rapacious tree.

No, I don't like trees, for I see in them

The prototype of the feudal-world-order

Of peasants exploited by aristocrats,

Whether high- or low-ranking,

And the Few accordingly thriving

At the Many's expense

In a thoroughly diabolical, subnatural system -

One sanctioned not only by trees but,

Originally and primarily, by the stellar roots

Of evolution in the Cosmos.

What were the peasantry

In relation to their aristocratic lords -

Good, bad, less bad?

Probably 'less bad' is

The most objective description

Of a class implicated in a pagan absolutism

And corresponding, in their subjection,

To planets and leaves.

One might say demons as opposed to devils,

And to anyone who looks at a tree objectively,

Rather than through the distorting lens

Of a feudal sympathy, leaves must appear demonic

And branches positively devilish.

As to the trunk, 'divine' could only

Be applied to it in the very relative,

Spiritually fundamentalist sense of Creator,

As when one distinguishes Jehovah from Satan

Or king from peers.

So anyone with the least shred

Of spiritual subjectivity would have no option

But to perceive in it

The theocratic autocracy

That gets the lion's share of the booty,

Since bigger and stronger than everything else.