Lamentation
The rising seas drove us from our farms as sure
As guns, the swallowing sands, the burning forests,
Storms and tides, everywhere failed crops, climbing prices
Desperate fighting over less than the year before
Each wave carrying away a little till home
Was a waterlogged memory, too heavy to hold
Save in old folks’ ramblings and young men’s disdain.
That we were warned is of no consequence or weight.
Blame the luxury of the distant and strong.
Guilt the pastime of the escaped, the rich and fed.
So this is how we sing our songs in a strange land –
Allusive, longing, fantastical, mouth to mouth,
Call and response in the fields as we work an earth
We won’t or can’t defend, or whispered secretly
At night so that our owners may not hear the words
Of how we learned to speak as children and our hope,
The cruelest master, that one day we may be free.
The politics to which we turned has let us down
False images and gold all made insubstantial
As we betrayed the promises that kept us whole,
Profane as the omniscient spark-dusted smoke eddies
In the dark, cold air above our poor, brave camp fires.
Armageddon
All the wars are crawling nearer with their songs
Creeping down their underground corridors
Asking for forgiveness, understanding, selling revenge
As justice, blood as hunger, and freedom as power.
To numb from these atrocities is natural as breath
As broken as water, as stiff as day old bread
protected in the language of action – bold, determined,
Right and all about defense at any cost.
All dreams of determination, all collateral damage
Minimized explained as camouflage and hidden reserves
Not just our enemies oh no but yours as well
We intervene for your progress and safeguarding.
Mutated by munitions, ordered by abstract authority
These faithful are at the end justified by their destruction.
Rebellion
Dry thunder cracks the dark, late summer night
To mock sizzling predictions with wild light.
We sit outside and let the cold wind wash
Away the fearful and the weak - they squash
Beneath umbrellas, smart trees grown for shade.
Like refugees from civil wars, they fade
Into the margins while we foolhardy stake
Our cool ignoring warnings. No mistake,
We all are due the deluge when it cracks -
Rank water, blood and shame upon our backs,
No cover in the flashlit running streets,
No safety in the burning struck retreats.
For first we took the rivers and the trees
And then we trashed the mountains and the seas
And now the tempest’s come to call account
Who’s left to speak for us as losses mount?
The wars are being fought in our small names
The floods and droughts the forests lost in flames
The young protest more than a kiss away
The storm has risen on my street today.
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