Good Men

We meet over fancy chai in a well-lit Shoppe (with two p’s and an e, of course), and talk about changing the world one letter at a time, but so busy are we, tipping our plastic tumblers at our well-spoken lips that our pens never touch paper. And before we know it, we’re running late to Ecology 101. And in our rush to save the planet, we toss our cups in the nearest bin. “No use switching cans now,” we think, as we rush to class, “that cup is already damned.”


We yell with our mouths full of vegan cuisine in shitty studios downtown where the rent is cheap for the city. We spout heated discussions over poverty, aid, hunger, and shame, but so busy are we, eating our broiled tofu dipped in soy, we can’t even consider the implications of our friendly meal on the family who eat only tortillas mere miles down the interstate.

We buy organic grains, regardless or origin and ride bikes manufactured by women making less in a week than what we paid for our eco-friendly notebooks at the local stationary Shoppe.
And my god, do we feel righteous.

We are following the advice of countless green publications, our hip neighborhood zine, a one-time second in line and several billboards in the tri-state area, but when we really sit and think about it, we aren’t sure if we should even bother.

Somehow we know that arguing about healthcare, rooting for a senator or activist, and believing wholeheartedly in the power of road trips to entirely destroy the ecosystem are all important, but when it comes down to brass tacks, we have no idea how socialized medicine could murder polar bears.

So we continue to search for the answer, reading hopeless evidence, while trying to retain hope, and straining to remove the “what’s one more?” mentality from our thoughts. What’s one more Poland Spring in a landfill upstate? There are too many to consider already.

We plant wilting tomatoes in pots and window boxes and feel a little sick while organically smushing bugs between our thumbs and forefingers, not really understanding why the circles we run in curse pesticides, just that someone told you a while back that Raid causes cancer in seventh graders who neglect their sciences assignments and you’ll be damned if you want that on your conscience.

So uninformed are we that we blindly do as they say and read what they recommend. We buy what they tell us to, and protest with groups of other confused people. We try as hard as we can to love the world that we love in, but even so we do nothing, all the while singing, “My brother is a Good Man. See how he recycles, caring for his fellow humankind and this rock on which we all reside.”