POETS UNITED - EARTH DAY

“We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.” - Wangari Maathai

This is the first time I am joining Poets United upon Mary’s invitation (thank you, Mary!). The theme this Wednesday is very aptly, Earth Day, which we have just marked off our calendar on April 22.

The destruction of the environment, increasing pollution, nuclear leaks, fallout, mutants and destruction of our planet are all issues that are now commonplace. This poem echoes what is illustrated: A nightmare where in the grey-blue skies and sea hang over the smoking cooling towers of the nuclear power plant and the metal derricks of rampant technological progress. The low-hanging deleterious smog makes of the winged elephant an evil portent of what is to come unless we change…

When Elephants will Fly

My genome hurts,

The water burns,

And air corrodes my tissues.

My body shrieks,

Each cell distraught,

As sea turns to acid, biting into bony beach.

My flesh creeps,

And cancers rage,

The wars within diminishing me.

My eyes extinguished,

My touch long-lost,

With oily residue polluting my pores.

Plutonium coats the sand, and cobalt paints the sky;

Iodine seas scintillate and thorium pebbles glow.

Each rasping breath begins a murderous clone of cells within me,

Rampant mutations that make me a freak in a sideshow.

My back sprouts wings,

My bones dissolve,

And thick skin turns to mush.

My life shortens,

My brain is porous

As radioactivity punctures me.

My world is ending,

My dreams defiled

The downfall of my species imminent.

My tribe extinct,

My peers unrecognisable

In monstrous transformations.

Uranium stars and curium moon that poisonously glow,

A rapidly burning palladium sun that turns all to ash.

Each step a torture, each touch an agony,

Liberation only in death, when elephants will fly.