Neverending Tragedy

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Neverending Tragedy

 

The flood of the Guadalupe

Was the beginning of a tragedy

After so many needless deaths

The response is a travesty

 

They’re still waiting for a hand

And they’ve waited long enough

FEMA said: We understand

The state of Texas said: Tough!

 

When the cameras went away

The politicians did the same

Leaving no one there to say

What happened here is a shame

 

The Feds will blame the state

The state will blame the Feds

Meantime the people wait

An act of God someone said

 

But God did not fail

To heed the ample warnings

And God did not rail:

There’s no such thing as global warming!

 

 

Preparations

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CATASTROPHES

 

Preparations

 

A threat to all of humankind

Duck and cover under desks

Let’s pretend we’re deaf and blind

What has created such a mess?

Have you ever wondered why?

Our preparations are in jest

Out of sight and out of mind

Let us hope it turns out best

Everything will be fine

Maybe – more or less

 

The storms are growing ever stronger

The wrath is ever greater

Hurricane season is even longer

And autumn is even later

The future is looking dark and grim

Shadows falling everywhere

Our chances growing very slim

Yet we are not prepared

The light is growing dim

Stand up if your care

 

We search for something better than

The path that we’ve been walking

A better way to understand

The measures we’ve been blocking

The time is now to get prepared

Disasters will not end

Ignore the pattern if you dare

It’s just around the bend

Here, there and everywhere

It soon could be the end

 

Global Warming Blues

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CLIMATE CHANGE

 

Global Warming Blues

 

A great wave of sweltering heat

From Boston down to Baton Rouge

Pounding people to the beat

Of the global warming blues

 

We knew it was coming down

We’ve seen this heat before

The coil’s come unwound

We fear what lies in store

 

Old folks in their old folks homes

Will suffer most of all

Except for those who live alone

They’re up against the wall

 

But everyone will feel the pain

When the power grid is lost

And all involved will feel the strain

When it’s time to pay the cost

 

You’ve heard from the talking heads

You’ve seen it on the news

You’re shaken and you feel the dread

Of the global warming blues

 

Burn Baby Burn

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Burn Baby Burn

 

Drill baby drill, burn baby burn

The US blames Canada

The climate takes a turn

Smoke comes down from northern skies

The ancient timber burning

Old growth brush like tinder fries

There ain’t no sense in learning

No one wants to hear the facts

The temperature is rising

The train is going off the tracks

There ain’t no compromising

 

It’s burn baby burn, drill baby drill

We’ve put the wheels in motion

Our time is nearly standing still

With stubborn blind devotion

The money men have got it all

The rest of us don’t matter

We failed to answer every call

Fat cats are getting fatter

Through it all we’re burning more

It’s rotten to the core

 

It’s burn baby burn

When will we ever learn?

And it’s drill baby drill

We haven’t got the will

 

Climate Deniers

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Deniers

 

For the many souls who were lost that day

The survivors can only pray

They throw up their arms and plead God’s will

With a shrug that gives me a chill

I wonder what these people will say

When they learn there was a safer way

They did not do what they should have done

They denied the truth that now should stun

There are no warnings for floods or fires

In the world of the climate deniers

 

They say that no one could have known

But they did and they said it clearly

The threat of disasters has only grown

And the warnings were repeated yearly

The hurricanes will batter the coast

The floods will ravage the land

Those who have little will suffer the most

And they’ll blame it on God’s left hand

But the rain and wind and the raging fire

Are the products of the climate deniers

 

 

Summer Winds

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Summer Winds

 

The summer winds blow hot this year

Sparking dry brush into flame

The people run or hide in fear

On the outskirts of Marseille

 

For this the French are well prepared

They halted trains and planes

Though the fire spread and flared

It was tempered in the main

 

Wildfires strike across the globe

The floods and monster storms

Catastrophes will come in droves

As the planet has grown warm

 

It’s far too late to stem the tide

Disasters will come hard and fast

Destruction will be far and wide

The damage done will last

 

Tell your leaders everywhere

In every town and nation

The time is now to get prepared

For the great acceleration

 

 

Adaptability

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Adaptability

 

Humans are nothing if not adaptable

We thrive under harsh conditions

We survive the near impossible

We convert our suppositions

 

Though we’ve no intent to harm her

The earth is growing warmer

While the summer’s getting longer

We adapt by getting stronger

 

When we cannot breathe the air

We’ll filter it through masks

If a curious child should ask

We’ll pretend we do not care

 

When the storms become a beast

That rails from west to east

We’ll seek shelter beneath the ground

Where there are no sights or sounds

 

We’ll adapt to almost anything

But someday they’ll wonder why

We refused to stop the poisoning

Of the water and the sky

 

We’ll say we did not understand

Knowing fully well we did

We thought we’d find a better land

So we took the highest bid

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.)

 

Heat Wave in Europe

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Heat Wave

 

All of Europe is on fire

From Madrid to Istanbul

The temperature is higher

No matter where you go

 

Everywhere the warming

Is driving through the air

Everywhere the harming

Is much too much to bear

 

The children are surviving

The heat is bearing down

Relief is not arriving

The waves are all around

 

You want to run for shelter

But shelter’s hard to find

A dash through helter skelter

An unforgiving bind

 

We all become believers

When children start to die

We’ll curse the rank deceivers

Who let us live the lie

 

The warming is upon us

The time has come to pass

Recall the ones who conned us

The flags will fly half mast

 

 

The Heat Rolls In

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

The Heat Rolls In

 

Today’s the day the heat rolls in

And stays into the night

As perspiration coats our skin

The sky is burning bright

 

We count the swollen hours

Until the sun goes down

People age like wilting flowers

We dry and turn to brown

 

And this is still the end of May

A glimpse of what’s to come

Soon summer heat will come to stay

A pounding like a drum

 

Summer nights are hard and long

Relief cannot be found

Our kids will grow up tough and strong

The toughest kids around

 

The elders will endure it all

Just like we have before

Those who rise can never fall

We'll come right back for more 

 

 

The Healing

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

The Healing

 

The earth is in need of healing

A grand extermination

From the basement to the ceiling

A cleansing in all nations

 

Those who do not help the cause

For the damage they have done

All but saints and Santa Claus

The great healing has begun

 

To survive the earth must be reborn

There is no other way

The fabric of the whole is torn

We’ve reached the final stage

 

No more fighting for our gods

No more building without care

No more greed and crooked laws

No more toxins in the air

 

We have made our planet ill

The grand healing must begin

We’ve the need but not the will

In the end the planet wins

 

Hammer and Fist

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

 

Hammer and Fist

 

Fire and hail seems very odd

The hammer and the fist

If there’s such a thing as the curse of God

It would look a lot like this

 

A trail of mass destruction

From the west to the open plains

Here’s an obvious deduction:

The gods have gone insane

 

The planet earth is striking back

At those who would destroy her

The wind and rain are on attack

Your laughter just annoys her

 

We warned you we would pay the price

For a failure to transition

You would not take our sage advice

Now you’ll face an inquisition

 

It’s far too late to make amends

But we could mitigate the harm

The cost of playing let’s pretend

The earth’s not growing warm

 

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

 

Climate Year in Review

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

Climate Year in Review

 

The hottest January in recorded history

A drought in southern Africa

Crops and cattle die in masses

El Nino and the Warming

 

A March of oceanic rising

Average surface temp of 70 degrees*

The bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef

Threatening thousands of ocean species

 

An April heat wave in southern Asia

Too hot for schools in India

Too hot in Bangladesh

Too hot in the Philippines

 

From bad to worse in May

Wildfires incinerate wetlands in Brazil

The effects of warming and deforestation

 

In July Hurricane Beryl decimates Grenada,

Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

 

August crowns the hottest summer ever

Wildfires strike the heart of Europe

 

September comes without relief

Floods destroy crops and displace hundreds

Of thousands in Chad and Nigeria

 

Hurricane Helene wreaks havoc in the

Southeast of the United States

 

October rain in the south of Spain

Strikes like a blast of thunder

A year’s worth of rain in a day

Killing over two hundred in Valencia

 

A rare November drought in the northeast

Of the USA turns leaves into tinder

And warming heat into flames

 

In December it’s official

The hottest year in millennia

Another year of climate change disasters

Another year of human neglect

 

We know what lies ahead

By observing what we left behind

Catastrophe after catastrophe

We simply put it out of mind

 

* Fahrenheit

Remember Me

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING

Remember Me

 

Remember me when the stars fall

From a sky of floating ash

Remember those who warned you

The end was coming fast

 

I know there is no comfort

In seeing past the bend

Where all is dread and dreary

Where darkness never ends

 

But do not fear or worry

There is little we can do

The die is cast in sorrow

The debt is coming due

 

Embrace your friends and family

As if it’s Christmas Eve

Their love will guide and warm you

When it’s time to mourn and grieve

 

When my time comes remember

I was one who saw it clear

The hard times and the warming

The end time drawing near

 

But hope will not abandon

For every end brings a new start

A vision of a better world

When this world falls apart