I rage
I mourn
I weep for every baby born
Their landfill-bound plastic lives1
Their coal-clouded carbon-filled skies2
We held snowballs3
And we told lies4
We passed laws to hasten their demise5
We traded their lunches6 for war machines7
And funded corporate tax cuts instead of vaccines
We make America “great”
By dumping waste into lakes8
And hope to make it harder for gays buying cakes9
I wonder if we even know what’s at stake
And what kind of sound will a failing nation make?
Someday they’ll grow
To spend and toil
Paid just enough to afford to buy oil10
And eat what’s grown in polluted soil
Never sharing in the cash-hoarding spoils
They will age
They will die
Even earlier than will you and I11
While the population continues to multiply12
The weak-hearted need not apply
I rage
I cry
For the old and sick not allowed to die13
We force them to suffer under watchful eyes
Claiming vague commands from beyond the skies
The first three lines popped into my head as I was lying down to sleep on 2017.03.14, so I
quickly wrote them, followed by two more. The next evening, I added three more lines. The following
day, I added two more. Then I let it sit for a few days before continuing. Still, only a line or
two would come each day.
(This pattern is unusual for me. Typically, I write a poem in one sitting,
and either leave it as-is or polish it later. Other times, I’ll write a first half and then
add the rest later.)
Some sources for the claims:
Salon, 2016:
The average American produces 4.4 pounds of garbage per day — 1.4 billion pounds daily, for all
320 million of us. That adds up to 513.9 billion pounds per year, equal to the weight of more than a
million blue whales. And quite a bit of that garbage was never intended to be used, but was
manufactured purely to be thrown away (for example, the plastic clamshell cases that many electronic
items are sold in).
U.S. EIA, 2015:
In the U.S., burning coal prodcues 71% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity-generation
sector, and greenhouse gas emissions are
increasing
at a record pace, worldwide.
CNN, 2015:
Professional climate-change denier Jim Inhofe (also a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma) brought an actual
snowball onto the Senate floor in order to “prove” that global warming is a fraud.
NY Times, 2017:
TAINTUS told a record 103 lies during his
first 10 months in office, compared to only 18 for Obama in eight years.
L.A. Times, 2017:
Republican mascot and con-man Donald Trump (while temporarily president of the U.S.) proposed a
federal budget that would cut the EPA’s budget by a third, eliminating many environmental
protection programs outright and gutting others to the point of uselessness.
USA Today, 2017:
Republicans, while controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, proposed to outright
eliminate 62 agencies and programs, including funding for reduced-price school lunches and many
science and health programs.
NY Times, 2017:
Republican administration hopes to increase military budget by nearly 10%, despite the U.S. military
budget already being larger than the next 10 countries combined.
The Hill, 2017:
Republicans in Congress, with help from some Democrates, overturned Obama’s
“Clean Water Rule”.
the guardian, 2015:
As a rule, Republicans in the U.S. are opposed to same-sex marriage in any form, and most are
unhappy with court rulings that found against bigoted bakers who refused to bake wedding cakes for
gay couples.
Alternet, 2014:
The very wealthy are collecting more wealth rather than creating jobs or reinvesting in the
societies that created their wealth in the first place.