Camp Mystic (Texas Flood)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Camp Mystic

 

On the banks of the Guadalupe

They camped for a hundred years

Now the camp is under water

Swollen with a flood of tears

 

The girls of the Christian summer camp

Were fast asleep that night

Some were playing by the light of a lamp

When a storm came into sight

 

They did not know the depth of it

The river rose so hard and fast

They could not know the breadth of it

It hit them with a blast

 

It swept away their summer fun

It stole away their innocence

The days of carefree youth are done

It never will make sense

 

The camp will never be the same

A place of boundless sorrow

A tragedy will be its name

Each day beyond tomorrow

 

(At last count, 27 girls were missing

from Camp Mystic in Texas.)

 

No Time for War

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WAR

 

No Time for War

 

A crisis around every corner

Never knowing what’s in store

When you’re fighting for survival

There is no time for war

 

The beasts of the apocalypse

Come knocking at our door

Fire, flood and pestilence

There is no time for war

 

The rising tides of warming

Are swallowing the shores

If you’re inside the danger zone

There is no time for war

 

The cost of finding shelter

From the deadliest of storms

When no one has an answer

This is no time for war

 

The pillars of our society

Are shaken to the core

The pressures and anxiety

This is no time for war

Sanity

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

Sanity

 

Hold on to your sanity

When the world is slipping into madness

Do not yield to your vanity

When the world is drowned in sadness

 

For we are not the center

Nor are we at the core

When the world descends to hellish grief

We are not the reasons for

 

In a world of gloom and horror

The sullen one is king

In a town of scream and shudder

The quiet one can sing

 

We have lost our equilibrium

We are reaching out for kindness

The ones who guide our passing

Are lost in moral blindness

 

If you want a world of sanity

Know that it begins at home

Take pity on humanity

For we are not alone

 

Flames of Paradise

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Flames of Paradise

 

Pasadena, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades

If paradise is an inferno

No place on earth is safe

Carried on the violent winds

Another home is laid to waste

These were the homes of millionaires

Stars of music, stage and screen

But there are working people too

Living out their hope filled dreams

 

Walk a mile in their shoes

See the horror through their eyes

As the flames are drawing nearer

As the smoke consumes the sky

You’ve lost all your belongings

You tell your friends goodbye

Your dreams go up in fire

No one can tell you why

 

What will tomorrow hold for you?

The promises are strained

No one can tell you what to do

Hold on and pray for rain

Be grateful you’re still breathing

Be grateful you can rise

As fire sweeps away the dream

Be grateful for your lives

(Prayers for the people of LA.)

A Monster Storm

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CLIMATE CHANGE

A Monster Storm

 

Ice, wind and rain

A blast of swirling snow

Rolling thunder in the strain

The harshest winds will blow

From Florida to Maine

From Kansas to the sea

The climate goes insane

These monster storms will be

Arriving like a freight train

Like an army on attack

Before the next one ends

The last is coming back

To visit where we’ve been

With brutal wind and ice

A hundred thousand men

Build shelters through the night

It is not if but when

The storm will strike again

 

We know what it’s about

The climate war is raging

Let there be no doubt

The battles we are staging

Are ones of life and death

In a war that we’ll be waging

Until our final breath

Until our kids are aging

 

Malibu Mourning

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

Malibu Mourning

 

Flames rage through Malibu

Home to the rich and famed

Howling winds of Santa Ana

Feed the anger of the flames

 

Run to save your lives

Run and don’t look back

Your homes and your belongings

Slowly fade to black

 

This is a place of beauty

Nature’s best and brightest star

We know you will come back

But we cannot know how far

 

This is only a beginning

Of the tragedies to come

It doesn’t matter where you live

Or where you traveled from

 

The warming comes a rising

Like a wave of thrumming dread

How many homes will vanish?

How many will be dead?

 

Flames of November

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

Flames of November

 

As fire rips through the great northeast

We will long remember

The flames of November

As the warming gathers its feast

 

We look back on the days not long ago

When the soil was too wet for flames

The season passed through November slow

And the seasons were largely the same

 

Now the laws of nature no longer apply

The flames find root in dry ground

We are not at leave to wonder why

Though the naysayers still astound

 

The age of the warming will take its toll

Beware the flames of November

The vast destruction was foretold

For those who care to remember

 

Now the world is in its final throes

Though the world will not surrender

We will live to sing our song of woe

Just remember the flames of November

 

Between Helene & Milton

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Between Helene & Milton

 

Between Milton and Helene

As we await the latest word

The most powerful we have seen

What horrors we have heard

 

Did you heed the latest warning?

Did you board it up and leave?

Will you hunker down ‘til morning?

Will your friends and family grieve?

 

We have heard it all before

The largest storm in history

Like the victims in a war

No longer a great mystery

 

Are you still living in denial?

Make a wish it isn’t so

Take an inch and give a mile

Every day the crisis grows

 

Can we ever make amends

For the decisions that we made

Is this how the story ends

With a bang and slowly fade

 

(My heart goes out to all those in

the path of Helene and Milton.)

 

Taiwan Quake

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CATASTROPHES

Taiwan Quake

 

We have so many manmade tragedies

We forget that nature has her own

The earth will quake, the wind will moan

The sea will rise, we will atone

And they will rouse our sympathies

Though they are far from home

 

In the shadow of a fearful beast

Taiwan suffers disproportionately

Though they endure it graciously

With modesty and dignity

Their fear looks to the east

Across the China Sea

 

A quake has hit them hard

They must turn to us for aide

Though their character is staid

Reparations must be made

We must hold them in our regard

Until the terror fades

 

At times like this we will remember

We are all in this together

Like birds of a certain feather

Through every kind of weather

From the first of January to December

To help is our endeavor

 

Fairness

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

Fairness

 

Life is not fair

We say it so often we believe it

We believe it so well we aggrieve it

The stars turned against me

My enemies joined forces

The D.A. and the media

The judges and the elite

The system and the deep state

They won’t let me have my way

It’s so unfair…

 

Well sometimes life is unfair

Things happen that shouldn’t

Children die in accidents

Mothers die giving birth

Wars and disasters

Hurricanes and floods

 

And yet most of the time

(maybe nine out of ten)

Life is fair

Good things happen to good people

Loving couples find each other

A child is born to caring parents

Guilty people are found guilty

Innocent people go free

The right person is elected president

Problems are solved

People work together

Teachers teach children

Music and literature

Love and understanding

 

Life is mostly fair

When it is not take heart

We will endure

And fairness will return

Like sunlight at dawn

 

Killer Flames

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

Killer Flames

 

The curse of Prometheus is upon us

The light of the heavens

The warmth of the gods

The greatest gift ever bestowed

Become the destroyer of man

 

Once we knew how to control the flames

We employed them to cook our food

To warm our homes

To bring light to darkness

To mold metals into useful form

 

But that which once served humanity

Has now become our enemy

A killer of our people

A destroyer of our abodes

 

We must learn again how to use fire

We must learn how to control it

We must learn how to defend our homes

Our schools and buildings

Our towns and cities

From the devastation of runaway flames

We must work to balance the forces of

nature – wind, rain, fire and ice –

or the forces of nature will work

together to destroy us

 

Floods

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CLIMATE CHANGE

Floods

 

Disastrous floods from Vermont to Spain

I remember a time when we prayed for rain

Now we pray that the rain will cease

A planet in the throes of a strange disease

 

California suffered catastrophic drought

A summer of wildfires erased all doubt

Now the temperature rises after heavy rain

How this world ends is becoming plain

 

Shame on all those who denied the change

By now we all know you were deranged

You loved your profits far too much

On global warming you were out of touch

 

So where can we go to escape the wrath?

Too late to alter our unfortunate path

Too late for humanity to grow and thrive

Though the earth will endure and survive

 

Train Wreck in India

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CATASTROPHES

Train Wreck in India

 

Twisted metal like sardine cans

Or bundles of aluminum foil

The wreckage piled over human bodies

The smell of flesh and oil

 

Heat beats down on rescue workers

Who labor through the night

A race to pull survivors out

While hope still holds the light

 

Bodies wrapped in sheets of white

Lain carefully on the ground

A grim and horror-stricken sight

We hear the mourning sounds

 

A woman cries for loved ones lost

A man releases swollen rage

A catastrophe at such a cost

A disaster for the age

 

Mass Casualties

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CATASTROPHES

Mass Casualties

 

A massive earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria

And all our earthly differences vanish

Like shadows in the sun

The horror goes to the heart of being human

Thousands of living beating hearts no longer beat

Hundreds of children cry out for mamas that are no more

Mothers screaming for mercy

Fathers beating their chests

As if anger could raise the dead

Tears of the living

Blood of the buried

 

May all who are able answer the call

May all who are willing lend a hand

This is a time of need

A time when all else recedes

We are conscious being sharing a small planet

Now more than ever we are in this together

 

We have the same dreams

We breathe the same air

In times of need we care