crocodile frack

Country rock weeps through fractured veins

deep in the mantle and, still, nobody gains, 

except those whose need for treasure

is no natural force: liquid under pressure,

breaking surface like a sweat of fear….

Nothing, but nothing, to be seen here…

Rip it up, this crocodile frack,

anger and energy, never going back

into black holes, into cracks,

fissures in the ground beneath our feet,

pumping water tears it open and attacks

the crust; just how much more lust

for gold, or something like gold,

money to burn, steal as you earn,

clear profit from the wallowing mud
we’re lying in?

The earthquakes begin, 

original sin, hell boiling with no tomorrow 

to save for or borrow enough sorrow 

to pay back what was given when stone 

and substrate were riven and cut to pieces, 

one piece, two or three, (how many?) 

four or five, six or several cut it 

any way you like, cut it 

                                       but it
no longer bleeds;
                          there’s nothing left, 

sucked dry and milked to white,
                                                the earth 

gives up its heart for heartless greed;

There’s nothing left to say, no need:

after this, there is no future.

© BH, 2019

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Another rappy, hippy-hoppy piece for my chums in the Facebook Extinction Rebellion Poetry Group. (Posted 16th June.) I’d like to think there’s are other ways of saying this stuff. I’d like to think I could be subtle about it. (I have been.) But then, this might be about rallying the troops: me on a soapbox at Speakers Corner, rabbiting about the end of the world. ‘It is nigh’ says me. The multitude applaud and go home to cheeseburgers and televised truth. Nothing changes apart from the guilt. And so, humanity goes remorseful to its grave. Me too, knowing I put in a good word for the alternative. 

A fat lot of good…