character limit reached

live-streamed anxiety and fear 
vie to be the next sounding board of corruption
since delving deeper than newsfeeds
to reveal moldy particleboard promises
would exert too much effort

(more convenient to validate self-worth 
with digital façades and seek protection 
behind ideological masks smeared with emojis
ensuring a continuous spew of hateful rhetoric).

comfortable affluence
silences those in crises
enabling money to pour unhindered
into garish monuments to “human rights”

villages are flattened for towering dams,
preventable diseases and cancers run rampant,
all in the shadows of golden buildings 
scraping the shredded ozone layer,

meanwhile 140-character attention spans 
remain ignorant of such atrocities -
devalued histories, a dying earth,
languishing humans -

when the newsfeed goes quiet
(when even 140 is too much)
then dies the inheritance
of future generations
in this increasingly 
disposable world.