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Oxfam 2017

Earth Speaks

This is not a disaster movie: no second takes or Jake Gyllenhaal to save you. Are you scared yet? This is real: the suffering, the struggle, the survival. Like exhaust fumes, the truth is hard to swallow. Are you scared yet? Here’s the Facebook livestream of all the failed crops, the floods, and the famines. […]

Our Oldest Relative

If your mothers face fell and her muscles couldn’t pick themselves up you’d call an ambulance. Another ice cap falls into the sea like a cheek. There are no sirens, no doctors, no A+E. If your brother’s airway began to close everyone would fight to get him oxygen. Another iceberg dissolves like a sweet on […]

Expediency

You will not hear of my end Through a headphone set or stereo speaker. If you put to your ear a telephone receiver, The flat line of a dial tone would sound eternal Like radio white noise or heterodyne ticks— It’s these that will last Through dust and bricks For a half-life of years. You […]

The Last Gods

Draw a graph Along the lines of sea and upwards sky. Your lines are the only stable things in these two shifting reflections. Yesterday, the sea gaped upwards to swallow the haze of horizon, Swelling as ice and inland stream succumbed to its slow pull. Tomorrow, the sky may stamp the sea back to stillness, […]

nothing to see

ravens will shun withered branches, flock to the boardrooms observe the final act in the farce of the human zoom in, watch as we fall to the sea caw at one another as the city drops to its knees and the ocean like a swollen womb grown heavy with the miscarriage of our days will […]

Trump Card

‘There is no truth, only truths’ ‘There are no truths – but if there were – this would be it.’ Up shoots the crowd and side to side the stadium shakes        the static grates the wheezing of their stifled hearts. Long ago the truth was drowned beneath        the senseless […]

Divorce Proceedings

Coal, we need to talk. Look, this is not your fault But Industry was a long time ago And I know you were excited for our 250th anniversary Honestly, it’s not you, it’s me I just need my space This relationship has been so fast paced Remember our first date, and I had all those […]

Listen Up

“Listen up. No phones, no nothing. No excuses. The news says immigrant problems, We say life problems. No fiction, only fact. You may ask where they are from, And they should reply Earth! It’s not their dream to flee their homes. The world is heating, taking a beating, Flooding, volcanoes, earthquakes, war. They affect everything, […]

Why?

Why’s the sky blue? Like a mirrored ocean, open expanses of California-blue. Why does it rain? The storm lashing on the window, wind like a ghost, puddles like oceans. But the colours are fading: Blue waning, clouds sweating, oceans rising, Ice melting, rivers flowing, storms raging… STOP! Meetings agreed, treaties signed, hands shook… Action? Will […]

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