Hi all, here's my hour 1 poem. I don't know how many people outside the UK have heard this on their news channels, but we had a big fire in a tower block in London recently, when the exterior cladding turned out not to be fire resistant. In the weeks following it appears that there are a lot of tower blocks that have the same unsafe cladding.

In the air section, the SOx are sulphur Oxides, NOx are nitrogen oxides and VOC are volatile organic compounds, all the stuff that pollutes the air.

Giles

Making Money

Arms sheathed in starry
sleeves of shimmering silver
she waves the downpour
onto philosopher's red sulphur,
transmuting drops into coins of gold
that slip through fingers
as fleating as a dream.

Firey industry forging the means
to speed out of sight,
faster than sound,
rocketing up the sides
of ill-clad towers
returning residents to the ground.

Inhaling the air of city streets
rich with invisible acronyms
nutritionally empty,
poetically dense,
NOx and SOx, and Vocs
ozone depleting substances
knocks and socks drip off a chemist's tongue.

Pity the earth,
bearer of all
as she watches her fading capital
as those whose dreams
exceed her resource.

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