Welcome to Planet Earth,
where books written by dead men tell the living how to live.
Where children who do not know how to live teach their children how to live.
Where children pray for miracles using minds that are made of miracles with clasped hands that are made of miracles.
Where children wander in search of God upon feet that are made of God looking with eyes that are made of God.
Where giant-brained monsters swim the seas and we fill their bellies with plastic while searching the stars for aliens.
Where poison blackens the air and the water because we all need jobs to stay alive.
Where we can’t stop dropping bombs on children because it’s somebody’s job to make those bombs.
Where thunderous beauty is overlooked and paved over with a parking lot for a shop that helps women feel beautiful.
Welcome to Planet Earth, full of elephant tears and whale bones, of metal beasts and flesh machines, of forest graveyards and bulldozed dreams, of vagrant witches and shopping cart saints, of sprouting seeds and unrecognized potential, of unanswered questions and pregnant suspense.
Welcome to Planet Earth, where we haven’t quite yet figured out that we are home.
Caitlin Johnstone is an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz. Her collection of poems is entitled Poems for Rebels.