Uxbridge
We’re all for fighting climate change,
Until the choice gets tough;
Don't try to meddle with our cars,
Our holidays, our stuff.
What beats the smell of petrol fumes,
The whiff of kerosene,
The closet full of unworn clothes,
The cinema-sized screen?
We'll stand behind the barricades
To fight off this green crap,
And watch the lifestyle we deserve
Fall stra...
Friday 21st July 2023 4:58 pm
Failing the people
I’m baffled how world leaders find the nerve
to sign a pledge, then right before our eyes
fail the people they pretend to serve.
They know the price of oil but never swerve
from drilling more while greenhouse gases rise.
I’m baffled how world leaders find that nerve!
They buy the myth of endless growth, the oeuvre
of economic frauds who feed them lies,
and fail ...
Friday 9th June 2023 11:19 pm
Pause!
Flags and placards round Big Ben
say
PAUSE! PAUSE!
Shouts and chants of Waddawewant?
a
PAUSE! PAUSE!
We call a pause on oil and then
we all lie down. We stand up again.
We shout demands at Parliament
to
PAUSE! PAUSE!
No new gas! No new oil!
PAUSE! PAUSE!
One point five degrees soon gone.
PAUSE! PAUSE!
Arctic in meltdown, blood on the boil,
w...
Thursday 8th June 2023 10:44 am
Rolling down to London
Rolling down to london on a train,
the taught and shining buds
of Spring are bursting on the trees.
Wharfedale’s misted in a bluish haze,
but heaps of plastic refuse in the woods
on the drab periphery of Leeds
descend my mood from buoyancy to pain.
Rolling forwards now, the rape fields blaze
and blackthorns bloom with pearls,
resplendent in the boundary hedges
we...
Sunday 4th June 2023 8:59 pm
Tank or tailpipe?
There was a man lived down my street
who felt unease about pollution.
Ashamed to see his car excrete
bad air, he found an odd solution.
Others who had thought thus far
used bicycles, or electric cars
but my neighbour’s mate was the man who sold
the fuel his thirsty motor drank.
He was fearful this friend’s business might fold
if he stopped putting petrol in the ta...
Saturday 3rd June 2023 11:37 pm
What will you miss the most?
So when we shoot past two degrees
and all the land is toast
and skies are black from the burning trees
what will you miss the most?
Me, I’ll miss the song of birds
that welcomed in the day:
those heart-rending, incoherent words
that had so much to say.
And when the heating of the ocean
flays the coral reefs,
will you temper your emotion?
Modulate your gri...
Friday 2nd June 2023 4:17 pm
The wasted wind
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind - Bob Dylan
What force can power the years ahead?
Now the age of oil is dead
we wait for industry to heed
the whisper of the wasted wind,
the whisper of the wasted wind.
A pivotal crisis is upon us
and ready or not we shoulder the onus.
We must make good or else be goners,
be dust dispersed by the wasted wind,
...
Friday 2nd June 2023 12:45 pm
Falling short
What hope remains while politicians skirt
around the crisis, pledging they will shut
a few polluting plants but token cuts
in fossil fuel extraction fall so short?
Sunday 28th May 2023 9:56 pm
No exit
Back when I was young I didn’t fear:
I knew the world could solve this situation.
We understood the cause, so the way out was clear:
a comprehensive pact between all nations
to stop emitting CO2
into the atmosphere.
Back then there seemed no need to march and shout,
to sit down in the road and press for truth.
We could not conceive of a climate up the spout.
In th...
Sunday 7th May 2023 8:39 pm
Today
Every gob of oil we suck today,
every turd of coal we flame resplendent,
every age-old species we erase
is assault against our own descendants.
I stoop before the few that reach tomorrow:
striving to live, I understand how they
must curse us, dodging lethal hails of arrows
we senselessly let fly today.
Saturday 6th May 2023 11:07 pm
Conundrum
We know the climate is changing;
We know that the atmosphere roasts.
We know too soon many places
Will be fit for no one but ghosts.
Yet we demand our holidays
And haggle for more and more stuff;
With regard to our consumption,
Excesses are never enough.
We all profess to love nature
And take the environment’s slant,
But we are pursuing lifestyles
Wh...
Monday 11th July 2022 5:19 pm
Climate Change and us (Updated version of a poem posted on 24 September 2020)
Climate Change and us
The planet turns, the planet turns;
The adults fiddle while Rome burns.
And children yet to be conceived
Have every right to feel aggrieved.
And us? We plunder wealth from mines
And join the back of frantic lines
In shirtsleeved January sales,
Pursued by ever-warming gales.
Exhausts and power stations spout
Unheeded warnings all ab...
Wednesday 6th October 2021 3:52 pm
The Day The Seeds Fell
The blue sky yawned
And out they came
As the mortal hoard
Looked for blame
It's us! It's them!
It's God's fair hand
His silence broken
To make a stand!
Some cowered. Some ran
Some stood in awe
As tears of seeds
Filled Earth's floor
For exactly 6 hours
The seeds were sown
For the 7th
Time stood alone
Leaves stopped in flutter
...Friday 20th August 2021 12:29 am
Spikes
in this empty stadium I'm being chased
pursued by something I struggle to see,
I smell a hunter's breath alien and rank
if there was one nearby I'd climb a tree
its dusk now and the circuits are endless
he surmounts hurdles with an easy glee
his dark vest sports no national colours
night falls, I need the floodlights to see
its been like this now for several years
...Sunday 8th August 2021 10:56 am
Fern
a cough as dead leaves drop
detached with soft faint sigh
last breath of lonely martyrs
murmur of breeze in the sky
gravity's heavier as we age
ancient oaks sad blue eyes
saplings thrust like a lance
a loving that knows no lies
do remember me, I'm here,
did you forget I found you?
like a lost fawn, dappled in
shadowed glades and dew
scoured every ...
Monday 2nd August 2021 10:18 am
My name is Silence
I used to range unchallenged on this hill
keeping mankind under my surveillance.
I watched as you discovered
the wonder of the wheel
and ways to traffic goods along the rivers.
You harnessed blameless power from water mills
but we became estranged.
My name is Silence.
Once I was your day-to-day companion:
the backing to your birdsong at the daybreak
and as t...
Friday 5th March 2021 9:56 pm
Extinct Possibility
Like angels pinhead dancing,
we have truly lost our way,
to live the fat anointed life
for fossils, we will pay,
radiation will not go away,
as oceans flood the bay.
Thus, the Machiavellians
enjoy their little rants,
and the paid-off scientists
are bribed with oil grants,
pretending they cannot decide
if CO 2 will raise the tide,
boost the climate worldwide.
For political advantag...
Monday 22nd February 2021 7:45 am
APOCALYPTIC SKY
APOCALYPTIC SKY
Yesterday
Had proven science fact
Much stranger than fiction:
Vivid orange night
Replaced
Bright turquoise morning.
Sunlight was postponed.
Normalcy took a holiday.
My neighbour's
Barnyard animals,
Five chickens, two goats,
Didn't know what was going on
With their immediate surroundings.
Neither did that lone bird in flight.
...Tuesday 22nd September 2020 7:47 pm
Call It What It Is
Heatwaves radiating across the country,
common occurrences every summer
now occurring every season.
Summer stretches long into Fall,
makes a cameo during Winter
And begins earlier every Spring.
It’s a heatwave, they say.
No, it’s global warming.
No, it’s now called climate change, haven’t you heard?
No, that’s all fake news.
It’s only a heatwave, you see.
...Friday 21st August 2020 4:46 pm
We've Never Had Water Here Anyway
As originally published with Clay Literary's Raven: https://www.clayliterary.com/post/design-a-stunning-blog
‘Neath the blistering heat, California poppies cast
themselves to the hillside sun as wayward children
start to lose their breath, as you now fight for yours,
running to chase the summer blues away.
The young and old all begin to fail; heatwaves
take the lun...
Thursday 20th August 2020 7:50 pm
Climate change and Lockdown
Is it the job of a poet to comment on current affairs? Are we political? Are some issues facing us beyond the political? Just some of the issues facing poets in a world which is bufftted by crises and facing immense challenges.
Simon Armitage laid down the gauntlet on the climate emergency, effectively saying that it imbued everything we see or do, and MVP responded by dedicating our 2020 anth...
Wednesday 8th July 2020 5:41 pm
Capability
The Climate is changing, affecting the whole world,
affecting every living thing on the Earth,
with very many losers, most of whom will be
unrealised, unrecognised and uncounted.
Climate stats start with the number of people who
are impacted – nations displaced, islands gone, plains
flooded, livelihoods destroyed and peoples distraught
and we hear of folk’s plight weekly,...
Thursday 23rd January 2020 4:51 pm
Climate change?
Autumn arrives at last, unseasonably late.
Frustrated at being forced to wait,
she makes her displeasure known
in a sudden, howling rainstorm that threatens more
than the dying leaves that are her due.
But she finds herself part-thwarted in her mission.
Others have shown their anger before:
the best plum tree felled by the surprise late snow of April;
the elderberries ...
Tuesday 8th October 2019 11:53 am
Climate Change
Earth as our landlord
A notice was given
Broken agreements
Eviction is imminent
Saturday 7th September 2019 10:18 am
Leave Or Remain, It's All The Same
How sadly it's come to this:
the apotheosis
of our egos' mad desires.
Now all this nightmare requires
of us to finalise
matters is to analyse
our crude methodology
and, sans apology
give the Earth one last, good kick -
yes, that ought to do the trick -
then drink to its poor health.
We've raped it of all its wealth,
we've torn it and tortured...
Thursday 6th June 2019 7:46 am
Climate Catastrophe: Pandemic and Pestilence
Epidemiologists and public health ethicists have been grappling for some time with the near certainly of widespread disease pandemics resulting from climate change. Changes in non-human animal migration and human migration will bring extant pathogens to new populations as warming releases long dormant pathogens on the world once again. Large swaths of the population could be wiped out in an incred...
Tuesday 7th May 2019 1:55 pm
Climate Catastrophe: The Reckoning
Before the reckoning,
The water was like glass.
We would glide
Across the surface,
Staring into the deep
As naïve as a recently
Birthed Godzilla,
Never knowing what
Destruction our
Mutation might bring.
Saturday 4th May 2019 3:02 am
Sourdough Recipe #2
Building a civilization
is a lot like baking a loaf of bread:
All you need are the right ingredients,
a little know-how,
and an oven.
Friday 30th November 2018 3:06 pm
Nothing else matters
Every single day I get a torrent in my inbox:
online communities that crave my support
with a signature, a letter, a donation to unlock
a Saudi prison cell; save turtles; alert
a smug politician to the suffering of the needy;
grant safe asylum to desperate refugees;
liberate wealth from the clutches of the greedy;
or restrict global warming to one point five degrees.
I wann...
Thursday 18th October 2018 1:28 pm
The Voice of the Commons
Goodbye to the common land.
Goodbye to our pensions.
Goodbye to free school milk,
and goodbye to fair rent.
Goodbye to a job for life.
Don’t expect a contract.
Farewell to the greengrocer,
selling fruit in paper bags.
Farewell to the council house.
They’re selling off allotments.
The end of days for the bursary.
No more pow...
Friday 7th September 2018 4:53 pm
Wake me up
Wake me up when the storm has passed
And the ravens have left the tower
Wake me up when the war machine
Has finally run out of power
Wake me up when the bigots
Have finally opened their eyes
And all of the presidents have given up telling lies
Wake me up when the tables have turned
And lessons have been learned
Wake me up when the big game hunters
Have finally paid for their crime
...
Thursday 24th May 2018 7:49 pm
Last Night
Last night was more than anyone could bear.
Last night they plunged a dagger into Yorkshire,
approving plans to poison land, to fracture
the ground beneath our feet, to choke the air.
Four thousand people sent in their objections.
A hundred speakers warned what could occur.
But seven County Councillors didn't care
and kicked North Yorkshire in the wrong direction:
a course that leads ...
Tuesday 24th May 2016 1:23 pm
Following the Money
From the North Sea, wild and grey
the horde bore down on Scarborough Bay.
I overheard one of them say
"We're following the money."
Like a Viking raiding force
they'd moved their enterprise onshore
to probe beneath the Yorkshire moors
for oil and gas and money.
A mighty fleet of high power cars
overran the Scarborough Spa.
I heard them, wassailing at the bar
thirsty for the money.
Sunday 15th May 2016 6:33 pm
Rhino swansong
Stuff yourselves you rakish apes, carousing,
smashed on greenhouse gases, with your gross
physiques ensconced on barstools turned from trees
that we’d depended on for shade and browsing.
You looked on us as merchandise. A horn.
Mindless hulks. You gunned us down, despising
I rhinos for existing whilst espousing
reverence for the fabled unicorn.
Mince us up! We’d make your quart...
Tuesday 15th December 2015 3:29 pm
The frog maker
There’s gift-stalls galore outside the wild and hilly
Monteverde Forest. I buy a saffron
amphibian, sculpted in glass, from the guy that crafts them.
“What species is it?” I ask. His smile goes chilly.
“Is Golden Toad. He no more around.”
He knew them as a boy and recounts the thrilling
jackpot glitter of frogs in the fern-leaf frilly
puddles of April that made their spawning ...
Tuesday 8th December 2015 1:00 pm
END OF HISTORY SALE!
FINAL DAYS! TOTAL CLEARANCE!!
The END OF HISTORY SALE is Now On!!!
Buy this planet! *slightly damaged
When it’s gone it’s gone.
It’s a massive, one-off sale sensation.
Conservation? Don’t be conned!
We’ve got the whole world for exploitation!
When it’s gone it’s gone.
Buy this beautiful hardwood foot-rest!
Timber sourced from the Amazon:
the world’s grea...
Saturday 5th December 2015 8:27 pm
C-R-A-P World Holidays
I’m looking for a holiday.
I’m surfing on the internet.
I want a little getaway,
a place I haven’t been yet.
I hit on this site
-‘s got lovely colour photos,
the prices are all right,
there’s lotsa countries you can go.
It’s called: Culturerelaxationandadventurepackageworld.com. Culturerelaxationandadventurepackageworld.com
That’s C-R-A-P-World dot com.
C-R-A-P
CRAP WORLD! CR...
Tuesday 24th November 2015 12:56 pm
No Warning
Chipper people, old and young,
making the most of the evening sun,
sucking death into their lungs
beneath a high street awning:
Formerly sociable, carousers and clubbers
but outcast now, they croon one another
with raucous gurgles of bronchial slobber
and carcinomas forming.
A message made to catch the eye
is emblazoned on the packet’s side:
“Cigarettes gonna make you die!”
but t...
Saturday 21st November 2015 10:49 am
Fracking Hell!
North Yorkshire was a green and pleasant county
with rolling hills and cricket on the green,
and tourists by the score
would come to see the moors,
historic sites and charming rural scenes.
And when they'd had their fill of nature's bounty
they'd spend their cash at tearooms and hotels.
But then some gas was found
two miles beneath the ground;
now Yorkshire has become a
Frack...
Thursday 19th November 2015 12:58 pm
Speak The Unspeakable
Speak The Unspeakable
Hi, I'm called Tim.
I’m writing this today
to make you all uncomfortable,
to rock your peace of mind.
I'm here to shock you,
here to mock your carbon hungry ways.
Expect no civil platitudes,
no reassuring lies.
I'm here to whack your attitudes,
dynamite your lassitude.
At times I'll be a little rude
- it's all for your own good!
...Monday 16th November 2015 9:56 pm
How To Be A Denier
Claim yourself to be a fount of knowledge.
Claim that every scientist's a liar.
If you've done a course at any college
you can be a certified denier.
Gather up those inconvenient facts
and twist them like they're bendy bits of wire.
Disseminating data needs great tact
but any fool can thrive as a denier.
Lobby for a mega corporation
to push emission targets ever higher.
Easy work, ...
Tuesday 20th October 2015 3:59 pm
Six Degrees
At one degree the western plains
of the US will be starved of rain,
Bankrupted farmers will pack up and flee
as desert restakes its claim.
There'll be no ice cap on the Arctic,
we'll lose the rivers of Kilimanjaro,
and frost that keeps the Alps secure
won't do it any more.
The Barrier Reef will bleach and die,
mountain animals will reach the sky
chasing the cool, and those that can't f...
Saturday 17th October 2015 1:30 pm
Is It Warm In Here?
Is It Warm In Here?
Is it warm in here, or is it me?
I used to live inland
and couldn’t see the sea,
now the salty brine
is up above my knees.
Is it warm in here, or is it me?
Is it warm in here, or is it you?
Polar bears are sunbathing.
Penguins don’t know what to do
because all the ice has gone
along with the igloos.
is it warm in here, or is it you?
Is it warm in here, or is ...
Tuesday 17th February 2015 6:12 pm
Hit
Hit
I got an email today from a coral
wanting to know why I don't have a car
I replied it is none of your business
blooming nosy crustacean
but corals aren't the type to let things lie
three phone calls, two texts
and registered delivered letter
later
I received a cheque from his mates
on the barrier reef
so I can buy an SUV
but I'm not that sort of bloke
I sponsored a rhino i...
Sunday 30th March 2014 2:11 pm
Octopus Ink
photo credit Rush Merchant III
Octopus Ink
It’s too delicate to express
Without risking failure
Danger of going too far
Pulses in my chest like fright
Pathos of saying nothing
Doing nothing
Procrastinating indicates how little
I know
I push forward anyway
Damming a river
Like a core of engineers
This river has flooded before
And flooding
(I believe...
Wednesday 14th December 2011 4:54 pm
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