By Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence
Pick your plagues, your afflictions,
Your calamitous conditions
And blend them in a lethal combination.
Add your viruses, your germs,
Your parasitic worms
And prepare them for deadly dissemination.
Cast their carnage, their rife,
Their contempt for all life,
Their competence for devastation.
And with combined ferocity
They won’t measure to me.
I am the most malignant contamination.
My toxins, my gloom,
My decay and my doom
Are constrained only by imagination.
My disease, my infection,
My cruel predilection
Have destroyed entire populations.
I’ve no conscience, no code,
No morality mode,
Neither virtue nor humiliation.
My sole purpose, my aim
Is to service my gain.
I’ve no use for humane consideration.
Know my name.
Know my need.
I am greed.
From Sow the Seeds: A composition in verse