Month: September 2022

Budgets Kill

Blue eyes sunk in a worried face,

dim with the ache of hunger,

closing to hide the horror of

cruelty in power and control.

——

Brown ones too in the faces

of children understanding 

that they are voiceless and

that loving adults voted for

—–

this annihilation, bold policies

that take their food, warmth,

their schools, jobs and hope

and create fat cats, and pigs

—–

that grunt and snuffle in the

decaying detritus of their 

lost lives,  painting with

their blood an enthralling

—–

idyllic picture of a trickling

stream of quickening money 

but block it, subvert it, to sell 

the oppressed for a fevered

—-

obsession with giving money, 

and more money, and misery 

money, for fancy, future jobs 

to their backers and bankers;

——-

who invite them to parties where

the poor are absent, the climate

crisis is chalked over and the

opposition groans and fights

——-

each other, while the despot

in Number 10 has easy days,

creating her queenly kingdom

where only the elite live well. 

Truss the Tory way.

The butterfly spread its wings,

as the sun rose late,

the scent of honeysuckle fills the air

on Michaelmas tide,

alighting to drink the sweet nectar it floats in my sight,

chilling my heart as the Autumn’s reign’s diminished.

——

Swallows and sparrows soar and chat as their

nestlings feed on the whining insects,

while others die of thirst and homelessness.

——

Small fruits hang on leafless trees ready for harvest,

miniature wheat and barley – barely usable,

and so the humble loaf, priced high will shrink

from the tables of the destitute and hardworking.

—–

Across the burned hills, brown spreads like an ink blot,

til the green and pleasant land is gone.

Rivers barely move on their sluggish journey

to the plastic polluted seas and fish lay dead

on the bare, crumbling banks.

——

The crisis grows, our greedy government knows,

but still it sows its fracking carbon woes,

madness, insanity prevails, eager to stow honour and

creating rows of zeroes for the richly clad,

and for the poor, voiceless and wise shows

contempt even as they suffer and die.

Climate Crisis Floods

The water soaked into the earth, cooling its parched throat,

dripping through the crooked cracks and pooling in the 

deep, dry depths of the soil which drank it like a sot.

The clouds hovered nearer and more rain poured down,

filling the rivers, the holes and still more and some more.

The people watched it rise, unbelieving the speed; and

fear driven creatures and humans ran to the hills.

—

Even there, the water came running in rivulets, streams 

and then in full flood and washed away the living and

the dead into the mud streaked death trap of a deluge

of biblical proportions, but no one had an strong ark

and so eyes bleared by tears and sleeplessness saw

their lives taken by a maelstrom and eaten in moments.

—-

Still the creatures ran and tried to swim away from the

gaping jaws of the flooding monsoon as it ground away

the earth, trees n villages disappeared as quickly as the

torrents could engulf them. Soon the small, shivering

children’s screamed, their fears and terrors lost in the

roar of the the angry, rushing, inundating cascade.

—-

Quiet now, dripping water, sluggish streams still carry

the carnage of its crippling attack on the communities

and a contemplating mood comes on those left living

the nightmare of hunger, fear and the black clouds 

that are boiling over the horizon and darkening their

already black nightmare as they cozen rare resources

—–

and wait, eyes dulled, voices muffled for the sounds

of rescue which does not come and their worries

are threatening to overwhelm and depressing their

energy and they sleep fitfully, empty bellies rumbling,

and mothers holding babies, try to feed them from 

empty breasts and fathers search for food in the mud.

—

Voices are heard and the press has found them, some

chocolate bars to throw over the washout and a word

that they are a few of millions who are in crisis. How

can they be rescued? How can they have hope? How

will they work together to leave their place and enter

the unknown, penniless, grieving, hungry and homeless?

Empty Earth

He stood, sentry like, part of the desertified

landscape, and watched a small cloud

on the horizon, willing the curving shape 

to bring salvation to his people and then

saw it melt away.  The moment gone. Still,

he stood in the shade of the hostile sun.

——–

She watched the food plants lovingly sown

shoot to life and then shrivel, becoming dust,

and still she watched to see in the distance 

a sign, any sign of the black boiling clouds 

that amass and spill, washing away the fear

of another month or year stealing their hope.

—–

They too watched black clouds turn away,

and another day comes and goes and still

the rain, promised by a weatherman  fails

to arrive. Instead, a few drops that dry before

a thirsty land can feel its moisture, then still

more days and clouds break their promises.

——-

and hope shrivels like the desiccated roots.

Every morning they look out at the barrenness,

cheered by a cloud or two, too soon dissipated,

depression returns and tears are the only wet

as the green landscape has been seared by

a drought and for the first time they feel

——-

the true aching for teeming rain for weeks,

and to understand another’s need is not 

just for a storm to bring back the grass but 

to feed their weakened children, who are

sufferers of the injustice of the changing

nature of climate absorbing killing carbon.