IS THE EARTH TRAUMATISED? UNINHABITABLE. A Long, Poetic Critique on our Long Lasting Omnicrisis

TITLES OF THE SECTIONS

i Who is Responsible?
ii. An Experience of Enviro-mental life.
iii. As Creatures fly to the Unknown
iv Winter Chills breathe down our Neck
v. Uninhabitable?

UNINHABITABLE. A Poetic Critique

i. Who is Responsible?

Is the Earth traumatised?
Wake up. See for yourself
Who is Responsible?
The Haves.
The Frozen Minds
Stuck in the past

Pathetic Politicians, Cutthroat Corporations
Merciless Media and Carnal Consumers.
Who mostly suffers?
The Have-nots.
The Neglected Souls.

Pathetic Politicians, Cutthroat Corporations
Merciless Media and Carnal Consumers.
Who mostly suffers?
The Have-nots.

Why do we reject our Right to Life?
Where is the life-support?
We who indulge in mental pollution
As climate crisis floods our focus
Burns up daily joy and then
Ensures a barren view, hellbent
2025, 2030 2040 2050 2060…. 2100.

—-

Oh, the soul-destroying forces
Upon the daily struggles
Is there a spirit for free enterprise
the Gods of Compassion welcome?
Let us find our life’s renewable
Energy instead of fearful features of
Present-future helplessness
Can we remember only mundane pursuits?
Can we expand to breathe transformation?

Climate Crisis, Carbon Emissions, Greenhouse Gases,
Covid, Pandemics, Wars, Methane Gases,
Deforestation, Poisoned Air, Fossil Fuels,
Polluted Seas, Polluted Blood Stream,
The plummet of Artic ice mountains
Plastic existence supported with greed.
Dark clouds convey harshness to grab
Our attention while desires oppress
As we stare into shaking futures.

A daily tedium of routine actions
The stress of doing fills storm clouds
Slaves to demands to make ends meet
Emotions convert to tears from water
To soak our face – a downpour
Of disasters, personal and global
Such sermons of thunder call to act
Yet we engage in a blizzard of blame.

We wander in greying green
Two doves reveal a splendour.
We stop in our tracks to marvel
At presence of what we have seen.

Still, we must find our way
Across the doomed riverbed as
The moss clings onto rotting trunks
A couple of sparrows bob up and down
In the comfort of the hedge as they
Wait. We scatter our birdseed.
and plant seeds in minds for change
While we, the white-haired elders
Never will know what bears fruit.

Voices of love and conviction
Echo in the caves of the mind
A refusal to go silent
Into the long night
As we flap our wings
And fly among trees or
Tiptoe through soft fields
To share our sentience
With the breath of life
And majesty of sacred earth
Plus, blessings of aliveness.

Have we forgotten ourselves?
Have we detached from dignity?
Sacrificed empathy, deleted its value
A slave to whims of the wanting mind
Even as we cramp ourselves into the
Moving zoo on buses, trains, planes
Left alone with sterile mobile phones.
A confirmation of dying of the living.

Where is our presence and passion?
Where is the real world that throbs?
Do we engage with our senses
To enlighten the natural world?
Can we stretch out our hands
or stay handcuffed to self-indulgence?
The veneer of intelligence hides the
Drab undergrowth of exposed shadows
Where texting, gaming, scrolling
Exposes the tyranny of a handheld tool
An escape from engagement with the real.

1.2 degrees to 1.5 degrees in Paris pomp
From vision to present target, to past
Next 2.00 degrees, then 2.5 degrees.
3.0 degrees. 3.5 degrees. 4.00 degrees
UNINHABITABLE.

Human forces plunder life’s support
Acts of harm descend upon the elements
Earth-air-heat-water suffer underfoot
Land dries, hardens cracks into misery
Air pressure builds – storms, gales, hurricanes
Heat of hell upon sentient forests
Water bursts from weighted clouds
Glaciers melt; rivers, lakes, seas rise
Floods drown life’s fortunes
Crazed elements quicken oblivion
Look at what has descended upon us.

Trees take a shower, have a wash
Drink, store and brighten their leafy
Clothing, feed oxygen to creatures
And talk among themselves
I stand still under their cover
To lend an ear on their whispers
The trees do not want me to tell you
You must go to listen to the trees.

I seize the now with clicked on brolly
Upturned raincoat collar, a stream of
Perpetual raindrops windswept
This soaking weather filling the void
I walk under this waterfall encircled
Heavy mud dragging on my feet
A raw exposure to wind, rain and mud
I trust the elements. You find honesty there.

Self-delusion resists adaption to change
Our species acts in its worst interest
Ongoing we prepare for the black hole
A human asteroid lands upon tragedy
We share mutually destroyed destruction
An endorsement of our collective dementia
Plus, scientific naivety of faith in machines
Even as nature announces its mantra of
“It’s nearly too late. It’s nearly too late.”

I sip oat latte and taste croissant, eyes
Upon passers-by in ones and twos
They take steps to I know not where –
Nor do I frankly care
I inhale the aroma and sip the warmth
And nod at the friend who waves

I dwell in this small world with its
Comfort of the tilting of the cup
To expose the joy of emptiness.

Rest my soul at Hairy Barista, Coffee 1,
To join the one and twos. I tasted
Holy Communion of the secular faith
In the Church of Coffee with sacred souls.
Green Life, Happy Apple, Holland and Barratt
Poundwise, Superdrug, fruit and veg market
Step by step here and there with exchanges
To wander home on pavement and lane
To reach the end of the day’s pilgrimage.

ii. An Experience of Enviro-mental Life 

An offer of bleak prospects and blind grandeur
Aided with economic opportunism and amnesia
Our resources fade alongside modest gestures
In maintenance of our fragile eco-system.
Trajectory slides up by degree
A realm revealing a scorched Earth
While our speculations of future views
A bizarre reliance on AI, graphs and charts
Only tell us what we know already
OMNICRISIS

The Earth knocks us off our feet
We lie on our backs to look long
and deep into the night. to see
far into the universe within
Know the gift of the expanse
The emptiness of self in time
With Earth’s embrace of our
Being in an eternal hug
Or suffocation of our life.
Everything crushed underfoot as
King Yama squeezes out our last outbreath.
We fall upon the rubbish heap of history.

Yet, business as usual scenario in
The theatre of lurid dreams
Batteries go dead in toothbrushes
Gadgets and gifts fly to the dump
Tesla cars topple into the coal pit
Cracks appear in dying of the roads
Along the corridors of hotels
Gestures of the unthinkable show
Clean energy reveals the unsustainable
As the politics of growth expand seas
And sink yachts and floods resorts.
On either side of scorching sun.

Lust for more and more impale us
Upon the tedium and the
Torment of the pleasurable.
In absence of inflamed attention
Eyes, ears, senses and more abide
Rich from divine gifts here and now
Earth’s reveals beauty to expand our
Receptive being to its fullness.
We could not ask for more.
Now we can engage more than
Gifts to Earth and sentient life.

Moment to moment, majesty of the sun
Floods its light upon sacred earth
We feel the stirring of the self
In the impressions of the new day
We stretch curtains pulled
A welcome to the dawn
An experience of enviro-mental life

Our being stretches to expansive light
To witness start of an unfolding day.

Do we deceive ourselves in this global mess?
Have our thoughts reached the edge of time?
These upheavals of land, fires and floods
Is it far worse than what we think?
And slumber on with a drugged mind?
Will we sink into the coalpit of obscurity?
Do we dance upon the sixth major extinction.

Death beckons as we follow
Each other’s footsteps, never far behind
A step into the hole, where dust gathers
With fear haunting our departure
From the uninhabitable amidst
The quest to hold our images.

iii. As Creatures fly to the Unknown

A gentle open of the back door
A tiptoe around the garden
Garden birds abide in innocence
Of cats, and species extinction
With a cup of seeds and my whistles
To herald the arrival of breakfast
Flutter of wings disturb the bushes
Wood pigeon stares from chimney top
A blackbird sings and coos across
Reminders of earthly paradise
I view the gentle world of creatures
Pockets of seeds with heads bobbing
Trusted companions of the day
With presentations, priceless precious
Which offers no marks for tomorrow
We express our ‘good morning’
With ‘good night’ nailed to the cross.

Happiness soothes my soft sadness
As creatures fly to the unknown.

Data abides in the prison of the naïve
What? Where? When? And How?
A pointless stare into future views
As the storms and fires scream at us
We smell the urine of the dinosaurs
A leak from warped minds of Martians
Right into our lap with a repulsive
Odour to pollute our free mind
A rise of 2.3 degrees ensures
Rough justice rules in a reign of sorrow
A bitter number to break out heart.

Muck and myths slide down drain hole
Rise of 2.5 degrees of endless droughts
Hard tramps across a barren earth
With water wars for survival mode
Still with license for forest fires
With licence for carbon emissions
Skies fill with dust of cremations
Fires and Floods. Floods and Fire.
To distract from parched land and
Parched profits for parched minds
With ‘Greed is Good’ signed on
The issue of every death certificate.

You are a Goddess of the Forest.
You entered the twilight world of trees.
Not once but more
Steps along the precious earth
with meandering roots and slippery logs
You left with a branch dislocated from its trunk
A sharing with the Temple of the Trees
You have made your journey
With the song of the dusk and
Lights of an ambulance to dissolve
Fragmentations and dislocations
Amidst a circle of connections.

Trapped in a persecution of narratives
Smoke-filled minds, blurred vision
A self gratulatory tone of success
With polished shoes under the
Table of late-night agreements
With deals done and dusted
Until the pilots whirs the engine
They write history that then become
Forgotten, to return to the Old
Order of lust, luxuries and waste

While presidents, prime ministers
Wallow in thoughts of legacies.
Sign agreements with thumbprints
Board super jets, walk up the gangway
Turn their back on deeds undone
To fly through corrupted space
Into sun’s heat bouncing on wings
As fossils of fantasy weigh us down
In private jets, CEOs wave to our leaders
With smug satisfaction in crowded skies
As plane fuel emits holes into eternity.

Oh, this life cast into a mould –
billionaires breathe carbon into
our faces from their fossil fuels
While escaping Cairo Agreements
As the cufflink set, premier grabbers
Forsake the sharing of life’s blessings
With self-demanding winner takes all
While the winner digs their grave
with knife, fork and American Express card.

I heard the tree roots run deep
As deep as top of the topmost twig
Spreading itself beyond our thought
A wish to meet roots of its neighbour
In the dark underworld
To pass nutrients across
I believe it
Not having a reason to think otherwise
Is the tree telling us to find our roots?
To offer shelter from beating sun and rain?
To expand up to those who live in the sky?

Kindergarten children play, run, laugh
Their joy, their innocence humbles us

Children know not what we leave them
And we know not what we leave them
A youngster climbs up a tree
Whose hands point to the sky
A journey from earth to heaven
Her hug bends the tree to her will
A first adventure a glow of delight
She smiles at shrinking faces below
Her gaze wanders in a magical space
With nothing to hold onto
Oh, what happiness to abide
In the beyond with hands
And legs resting on either side
of trustworthiness.

iv Winter Chills breathe down our Neck

What warms the chill in our body
A joy of the unenjoyable
As winter breathes down our neck
And sends its presence to receptive cells
Why have the trees lost their leaves
In winter and the barren landscape?
Why is the tree stripped of clothes?
Do trees love the bareness of it all?
As we reach for sheep’s wool
to wrap up against the darkening air
Our chilled face hovers in emptiness
Cold hands engage in a tantric dance
To touch and feel stuff of sensations
Cold, cool, warm, alive
From detachment to intimacy
In exposure to the elements

While the wind swarms around
And hands feel close to nirvana.

I cannot ask for what I have.
I have all I could ask for – a pulse
While awareness lingers at its edge
Earth offers us all without a blink
I knew this on the day of birth
The world will not grow hungry
Not with our hearts full of free gifts
Mushrooms fill the forest floor
Earth rests with vast, open hands
More than we can hold
More than we can carry
Yet, we want the unwantable.

In this closeness to the pulse
No need arises to pretend
Nor pursue an entertainment
On the supermarket shelf
With our long flights into falsity
Of sensations, of get and grab
As we keep desires for the needless?
Have we forgotten who we are?

In the night, the Buddha woke up
Timeless eternity revealed itself
As the elements of time
Withdrew into their rightful zone.
His heart quivered with concern
As he pointed his fingers to the Earth
To bear witness to the steps
He would take to dispel delusion.
Yes, the night, the Buddha woke up

What shall we do now? Our
Leaders want to cancel our future.
To replace with household worries
For domestic minds starved of vision.
Nobody knows if we are dead or alive
While stuck in air-conditioned offices
As the current epoch denies our
Wanderlust in the Garden of Eden

Nanobots/robots glide in canals of blood
Filtering the plastic, pollution cancer
And chemicals we swallowed with
Our pile of plastic food, then waste
With manicured hair and clean shave
Taboos block our doomsday speech
Thus, talk remains everything but
On apocalyptic life; the ease into
Death stops the witness of farewells
As the darkness of day fuses into
Darkness of night in this Dark Age
We slide towards post humanity.

Myth of our civilisation stain our
Lives due to assault from our rabid intent
We plunder and crave for more, by any
Means necessary, to get what we want.
We get what we deserve.
And what we deserve
Is what we have got
And what we have grabbed.

Human being, not human consuming
We turn the tap, on/off/on/off
To clean our teeth, tweak our gaps
Cut down on sugar and eat brown bread
Crumbs of comfort of personal change
Take a day off, reflect on tasks
With weekends kept for DIY
While we wash dirty dishes, wash
and polish metal on our car parked outside
And daydream about summer holidays.
Floods, fires, heatwaves get closer.
Alarmism, as we wait our turn
For our name, for the call to depart.

v. Uninhabitable?

Can this be really happening?
Have we failed this life?
Have we evolved into hell?
A waste land from wanton pressure
A clenched fist against the Earth
To trigger rebellion of nature
So elements bury our species.

Have we left it too late?

Can this be happening?
To us?
To all of us?
Not even the ostrich
Presses its head
In the sand.

Let us steel our heart and mind
For what has come and what is to come
And act beyond our self
to Listen near and far and Respond
Before we bow to the Earth
To say Goodbye.