i heard a hollow crunchy metallic tapping sound. it wasn't like a machine sound but it wasn't like a sound in nature.

it was this crow tapping a hole in a can of energy drink. so it was a sound in urban nature by a bird that learned to live with us and get some use out of our trash. i was talking with my friend sam who was born in africa and lived in india too, who saw people living in landscapes of trash. i told him i've been trying to keep the little swamp clean. we commiserated about the scads of plastic forks and packets of soy sauce, the smashed bottles. we discussed how forty percent of food here becomes trash. in lost wages he said, it's sixty percent. we thought if you have so much, and more, waste becomes part of the food chain. and yet people are starving here too. we thought how americans act in the shadows of a government that simply takes what it wants by force. we thought how lucky we are to live here and not be in a concentration camp under the shadows of drones, or rooting through mountains of trash to scratch out a living. we thought how lucky we are able to complain about trash and ignorance.