The 20 little poetry projects
this burning mess
breath is life
small red berries see in the dark
the white-hot light of these end-of-days summers
filling my mouth with ash.
now all I smell is burning
when I worry about the future
and I long to run to the water to cool my raging skin
or taste the silence of all those screaming trees Bezos and Musk can’t hear
in California
or the Cayman Islands
or Mars.
our breath is killing us in our sleep
while we wait for someone else to fix the problems we’ve created.
Skodene!
these companies are all going green to save the planet
because, they say,
liquid natural gas does not come out of the ground…
the exquisite pile of lies
making me shove my thumbs in my eyes so deep
I am now deaf,
the silence slicing through me.
“she’s mojo,” they said,
“the one who brings water to fire in
rippling, glass buckets.
this madness will end in the squishing of mud between our toes!
maajtaadaa!
the trees are calling while they run around screaming
with their hands on fire.
(C) r. l. elke
I like “making me shove my thumbs in my eyes so deep / I am now deaf.” That’s a pretty neat poetic trick.
Powerful in every way. Intense and meaningful and true in that painful way. This line will linger with me for a long time
“our breath is killing us in our sleep
while we wait for someone else to fix the problems we’ve created.
and this one
this madness will end in the squishing of mud between our toes!
maajtaadaa!
the trees are calling while they run around screaming
with their hands on fire.”