Take a breath

Take a breath,
Jealous the water
Affair and passionate exchange
The air is devoured
In an ecstasy of inhalation
Oxygen
The life force

Take a breath
Of your sweet child

Exploit the gift of life
Build your factories
And pant
Pant?
Gasp, gasping?
Precious air polluted
Fresh the taste is gone

Look up for your reason
Towers scrape the clouds
Clouds of brown
Poison,
You create the palette
Paint the choke
Starve your own throat

Stop,
Take a breath
Of your own venom,
And exterminate your brothers
Oxygen,
The life force
In a concoction of malice,

But breathe,
The water laughs,
Green no longer
A grisly grin of russet
As you breathe your own suicide

And in terminal breath
The toxic breeze whispers
-Take a breath
My child
Breathe the child of your own
The child of
Industrial disease-