The End of the World as We Know it
East Lyme, CT
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Thick black smoke and heaps of melting ice.
Bold headlines next to innocent creatures change:
vulnerable,
endangered,
extinct.
Cries from trees having their roots ripped from the soil, torn from the earth that has given them life, and has allowed them to give us air to breathe.
It’s all there
A picture in my mind of what the world will eventually be.
Being forced to explain to a new generation of children, who Mother Nature is, and why her creations have been wiped out, cleaner than a newly washed car driving in the rain.
Having to tell these kids why our museums have a start and end date on their Arctic habitat attractions.
Why the plastic Polar bear statues, in those exhibits, get thinner until their eventually none.
They fade, as does the snow on the ground, and the Icy cliffs around them.
Telling those too young to remember when our lands weren’t flooded.
Or when our soil wasn’t contaminated by sodium. Dehydrating our crops as they desperately beg for clean water, but because they don’t have mouths to scream, so who cares?
Even if they did scream, no one would listen.
What will those little ones think?
Looking at our generation as nothing more than the monsters that hide under their beds, except what we’re doing isn’t imaginary.
We use so much,
we destroy so much,
but we care so little.
The earth’s resources are not broken toys we can just throw away.
Letting smoke come out of our exhaust pipes, our factory chimneys, and forest fires that we were the flint for.
It should be coming from our ears from the fires inside us to fight this.
That’s what we need fuel for.
We need to get motivated.
The past shouldn’t be something we look back on and desperately wish that we had made more of an effort fixing because suddenly, the things we once feared, are now bigger than ever. Standing over us, taller than the heaps of garbage we’ve piled into landfills, but not heavier than the guilt of not acting soon enough will be.
We should not later be hoping that the earth provides us with what we need, despite her soul being worn down to the bone like a tattered boot that we continue to wear.
Falling apart.
Hurt.
Abused.
Before long, the thick black smoke of our wrong doings, will suffocate us.
Reflection
Reflection
I was inspired to write this poem because I care about our planet. It’s home to me, billions of other people, and animals. It should be preserved so that we can live here as long as we can. However, many people are ignoring that there is an issue going on with climate change. I want to improve that to ensure that the planet is livable for the future generations. This poem is free style; I wanted to write about this with imagery and sentences that would make people think. This topic is incredibly important because it affects the whole world. I want to do more to help climate change, and this seemed like a good place to start.