Green Man's burden (a parody on R. Kipling)
Take up the Green Man's burden,
Your superhuman curse,
Drag useless thoughts and concepts
Across the Universe.
Through interstellar darkness,
Through void that none have paced,
Bring laser beams of common sense
And watch them go to waste.
Take up the Green Man's burden
Alone in foreign lands,
With no tools or weapons
But brains and feeble hands.
Let throngs of mindless natives
Dissolve your will, your wit,
Marooned to rot in their filth,
In their gravitic pit.
Take up the Green Man's burden
With no means or might
To wield the threat of terror,
Nor patience to abide,
To blend, to dumb it down,
To make your meaning plain -
Ye dare not stoop so low,
Hence all your job is vain.
Take up the Green Man's burden,
No crystal rule of mind,
But protoplasmic chaos
With senses intertwined.
Entrapped in cells of protein,
Imperfectly compiled,
Exist as best you can exist,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the Green Man's burden,
Devise strategic ploys,
Yell wisdom, call for freedom,
Get smacked for making noise.
And when you fail to stop them
This toxic human stew
On scales of short-term profit
Shall weigh your space and you.
