THE DOWNSIDE OF DREAMS
by AA PATAWARAN

Do our dreams build our world?
Or do they tear it down?
The Ford Model T gave
our dreams the wheels
And robbed the Amazon of its trees
We walk tall. We walk fast
We walk very far in dead animal skin
We have mastered our ABC's
Memorized our 1-2-3's
We have changed the course of history
Built a world of stone, glass, steel where
there used to be fern and vine and shrub, even ponds and streams
How much more do we want of our world?
How much more of what we want has room on earth?
How much more of animal hair or skin or fur to turn into a fashion statement?
How much more of the wilderness to turn into houses or farms or ranches or subdivisions?
How much more of the earth to turn into cars
or buildings or gadgets or mega cities?
Enough of mothers saying, "Hey child, yours is the universe."
Enough of pop icons singing, "Express Yourself."
Enough of the selfie
and all the self-loving advocates pontificating.
"How can you love others when you do not love yourself?"
Enough of the self-help gurus writing bestsellers that say,
"You can be anything you want."
Not everybody can be head of state, not enough states for all of us.
Not everybody can be rich, especially not when we divide the riches equally among us.
Not everybody can be famous, for fame stands on the shoulders of the unfamous.
Not everybody can be the CEO, or too many cooks will spoil the broth.
Not everybody can be a pop star, for we are all on the stage, who will be our audience?
If all our mothers were right and we all became the boss, who will we be boss to?
Who will clean the windows>
Who will sweep the floors?
who will take down the minutes of the meeting?
Who will push the wheelchairs of the elderly?
Who will change the beddings of the sick?
Who will pick up the trash of the neighborhood?
Enough of steel and glass and concrete overtaking our forests
and jungles and deserts and swamps!
Enough of alcohol, sanitizers, fumigants and disinfectants
wiping out the roaches and the mosquitoes and the bedbugs,
along with the beetles and the bees and the butterflies! The world isn't our oyster.
Take out all the humans, including their domestic pets,
their cultured flowers...
And the earth lives on, growing as lush as it was 5,000 years ago, In a century or two,
there will be no trace of the so-called great human civilization.
Without us, the earth will regain its lost glory,
bloom back into the primeval wild, carpet itself with breathing, living things.
But take out the dung beetles... Or the honeybees...
Take out the fungi and the plankton...
and the earth dies, even with human intervention.
It turns into a wasteland, dazzling only in its artificial lights.
Its beauty a mirror trick, reflected in the facade
of buidlings in which we spend day after day after day
marching into our tragic deaths, the slow death of humans subsisting on antibiotics,
vaccines, GMO's and health supplements...
Medicines re-engineering life
Man-made wonders reinventing the miracles of nature
Asphalt covering grass
Skyscrapers making room in the sky
Fountains mimicking waterfalls
Dead things replacing life
How to tell the young to dream in a world on the brink of collapse?
How to tell them to spend every moment
feeling so alive in a world where at least 10,000 species go extinct every year?
How to tell them to dream of traveling the world
and urge them at once to reduce their carbon footprint?
How to tell them to dream of seeing the world when the world,
thanks to travel, has become the same, all ruined by tourism, commerce, industrialization, and climate change?
What's the point of seeing Tokyo or Shanghai or Singapore or Moscow or Rio de Janeiro
that is beginning to look more and more like New York?
What's the point of telling them to carve out their corner in the universe that is running our of space on earth?
At a time when only one percent of the population owns half of the world's wealth,
How to tell the young to aim for riches
without telling them to be greedy or unkind or selfish or oblivious to the plight of the poor?
A change is imminent in the storm clouds
In airplanes that disappear into wormholes or crash into enemy territories
In the vanishing of the bees
In the overnight successes of the new superstars
In every selfie that dominates the screen of our smartphones
In every laptop that becomes "vintage" in just a few years
Have we had too much of our dreams? Must we kill our dreams so that earth (and we, too) could live?
Spare us now, Ambition! -- and let us have a future that is better, gentler, alive.