They did it to the sky —
look up at the jail-bars
from their planes and 
factory stacks, cross bars
from bomb craters and 
piles of smoking Brown bodies.

They did it to the earth —
look out upon the jail-bars
of roads and pipelines,
cross bars of damaged towns,
ghost landfills, sick-making farms,
trails of brown Brown blood.

They did it to the sea —
look to the horizon over jail-bars
of diesel spew, acres of death and corpse-fish,
cross bar drift nets
and garbage in patches as thick
as the brown oil sucked from Brown lands.

Don’t ask me
who they are.
You know. 
You nod. You agree.
You consume
and enable. You

look 
into the sky
marveling
at the color
smoke brings out
of the sunset. You

look
across the land
and thrill to 
the ease
with which you can
cross it. You

look
at the ocean
and imagine
yourself a pirate
adrift beyond law
and rules. You

don’t understand 
how they could ruin
a world
that seems like it was made
just to be captured
on a white page.