al-'umm al-jāfiya

If it weren't for the beasts we 

Compose as scholarship, we 

Would all live like professors

Pretending not to be beasts

In strange poses, indisposed

By our disposable world.

Laud the old and durable

Over the throw-away wraps

Piling up in the landfills,

But it's all disposable:

Everything to be disposed

To the act of becoming

Other things. Composition

Equals decomposition,

And what we hate about trash

Is its tendency to last

When we so longed to dispose

Of it. Mountainous middens

Arise from life's dreams of life,

Trucks of waste per gram of self.