Idealism comes with white earphones

My love for you is mass-produced under plastic on the shores of a dwindling African lake,

Blood red petals packaged in petroleum.

Let me hold your hand on a slow walk around campus this evening,

lit by the soft light of climate change victims burning in coal-fired furnaces.

Let me kiss you sitting on the edge of the fountain,

Koi fish swimming serenely in the perspiration of mine workers

coughing TB phlegm to float like reflected stars.

Let me take you for a cup of ground cash crop.

We can talk idealism with white earphones,

cloud-watching on a lawn of mown dignity.

Leave your mini cooper, let us ride a drowned arctic bear

to the beach tomorrow

sit among the dead dolphins, drinking the red blood

of Iraqi children, ice-cold with condensation forming

on the outside of the 360 ml tin can.

Let us raise our children

To sell and buy fresh water.

Teach them to kill. Teach them to kill. Teach them to kill.