The Big One

words words words not rebellion not this time we abandon our disruption for poetry
we write unite to survive without arrest no rest just stop those fossil fuels and choose your future it's a big one choose new words out of old ones green party piece/peace earth alliance friends of but please just stop! no rose bank shell street of lies at fifty five eyes of the world on Tufton truth deniers
put my poems on the pillar here propping up the establishment but I will hear established wisdom speak flags of poetry prose and people's pickets all my friends are dressed as death the walkers walk 
writers rebel

new day a wildflower cloak sewed/sowed my heart seeds into the city hours waiting to rewild and all the earth days will they ever come?
 butterfly friend can't find her father how can you find one man dressed as a bee among so many waiting to carry the earth the drums in front have caught us behind too many people to move a nation we keep waiting to move forward we abandon assembly too many disturbing thoughts that you won't listen to
60,000 dressed as penguins tigers spiders beetles dying in the streets a giant newt pink octopus a parliament of owls but I cannot hear the celebrities speak for the noise of the drums behind the drums drowning then we die and listen to the birdsong no-one else can hear
none of this is newsworthy

running out of time we find poetry in motion exquisite humanity blocking the streets who runs the disruption?
the marathon man says these are our streets whose streets?our streets and this is what democracy looks like filling the outside of parliament space with people assembly
the homeless man with polite desperation shares my smoke and tells me to take care these polluted streets are hard on our feet we can't run like they do but we keep marching and we remember Michael hard words made Addie cry and I remember them up in the sky last year and now Stephen gives me a poem from then when I was locked on to Helen's hand and impolite desperation
when unity was poetry through police legs and yes we did survive that time though the drums drowned out our words arrest a rest and here hear the drums again
the drums again and small pink paper boats will float your home/office I hear two strangers just barely afloat in the channel holding hands and we can do this if we run together

and here again assemble hear and again the words and drums the drums again so many friends and stop rose bank youths are singing on the banks of the river stop the banks investing and the slow marchers are not slow now they grow the chant and rising up we stop for blue light and light blue poetry flags waving oceans are rising up over the river and the runners are marching with us in the sunshine and the clouds hang low over a silent parliament and what next we say
what next?

Tufton Street

The Big One: 21st April

On Friday 21st April Writers Rebel held a protest outside 55 Tuftin Street, home to the ‘Global Warming Foundation’ the ‘thinktank’ of climate denial and delay. Some of us attached our poems to the pillars.. here is mine.

What gifts shall I bring to Tufton Street? 

I will bring you the aroma 

Of a million shellfish cooking where they lie 

In boiling rockpools;

The last cry of a lonely bird;

The silent columns of an empty wood; 

A meadow without bees;

An orchard with no crop of butterflies or fruit; 

The stink of cattle caged in concrete; 

An ocean of corrupted algae;

A whale rotting on an empty beach; 

The fading rattle of a child’s last breath;

A mother’s drying breast. 

I will bring you acres of blackened stumps 

And dust; 

The slosh of waves within an empty house;. 

A field of withered crops; 

A single feather drenched in oil; 

A dead earthworm in it’s poisoned soil; and 

The vomit of the cancered man who farmed it; 

A skeleton entwined with plastic. 

I will bring you a swollen bloated corpse 

Floating on the ebbing tide; 

Blackened bones and greasy ash 

From flesh. 

I’ll bring you the stench of frightened sweat; 

The smell of fear 

And shit 

Flowing through our flooded streets. 

I’ll bring you hate in too-young eyes; 

Despair in old ones. 

I will bring these gifts to Tufton Street 

And lay them at your feet. 

And then you dare – you dare – 

Tell me you’ve got this.

Teal

They’re shooting on the marsh tonight

The teal and I, we cannot settle

My heart the rush of turning wings

I feel the flock

I know the rise in glorious harmony

The turn and counter-turn

The break-up

To circle flooded meadows once, twice alone and

Settle into temporary peace upon still ponds

Only to alarm and flutter once again.

 

What though the huntsmen haunt a different patch?

We flock, we feel the shot from miles away

Still pierce our collective breast.

Understand us, if we pipe in panic

When threat’s upon some others of our feather

Forgive us, as we circle, rise and fall

Disrupt, and muster, call and call and call

I must lift and splash and turn and counter-turn

And settle only briefly, to rise again

In grey November dusk and flood.

We are the flock

The guns are real if distant now

We cannot settle to the sound of death