temperature drop
counter-measures introduced
slow tick-tock of clock
~
n.b. Chilling in front of a fire.
CLP 17/12/2022
on time
Tag Archives: Fire
on heat
wonder at mankind
trains to Paris undersea
pylons lift cables
systems of power
connect us to each other
bind us to our fate
~
n.b. Standing here overlooking Rainham Marshes, watching another bloody sunset, you can hear the electricity cables crackle as they carry charge towards the City of London.
If you listen really carefully, you can hear the insane laughter of stockholders celebrating multi-billions of profits being divvied up by BP, Shell and a few other energy companies, while the Earth’s climate spins inexorably out of control.
Nearby at Wennington, the scenes are of burnt houses, charred trees, scorched earth. Scenes familiar to residents of France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, California. What more proof does this once green and pleasant land need that things have changed, that we must change?
People blithely talk of access to air-conditioning, not aware that more energy is now used on such cooling equipment in summer than that used in winter to heat us. It is we who are being conditioned by the air.
Things have changed. Something’s gotta change.
CLP 04/8/2022
on time
you think it's over
begin to believe you've failed
smoulder, flicker, flare!
~
CLP 06/07/2022
Can I come in? It’s not safe out there
…it never has been, I thought
I read the news, have seen the stats
hear the doppler rise and fall of sirens
bouncing off the city walls insistent
on untrammelled passage
scrambling wits of locked in drivers
blocked in lanes unsure quite where
the blue lights approach from
or head toward, what they are
and who they’re for
.
May I? For a moment, until it clears.
Could it ever, I wondered after
weeks, months, years have passed?
Some still remember how it felt
to bump accidentally into friends
or brew a fight with a stranger
or catch the light in a smile
(while sharing a smoke at the cool side-door)
agreeing to something a little more intimate
~
n.b. NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 6 Prompt, take a line from a story as a prompt, then write the poem, then
“Actually, one of them was supposed to come today, but because of the commotion going on out there they sent me instead.”
From Samsa in Love by Haruki Murakami first published in The New Yorker, republished in Desire Vintage Classics / Penguin Random House (London, 2017).
~
CLP 06/04/2021
At the Gate
A sentinel attending her borders
Set a bonnie fire of enthusiasms
Enflamed idleness
Smoked out fears
Stoked courage
Sparked resolve
Sent me on my way alight
.
CLP 11/07/2020
Smokin’
~
The evening the supermarket burnt down
Four miles away in the town up the road
Its smoke funnelled out to the coast
Streamed high across the marsh
Curled beneath a front pushing from the west
Where the lofty plume lost height over the cool sea
Shadowed the sunset and emerging night
Carrying smells of charcoaled meat offshore
To be minced by the churning turbine blades
Of the wind farm on the shoals
.
CLP 28/06/2020
Grate Full
Piled wood collapses
Rattles iron log burner
Startles lone sleeper
.
CLP 16/01/2020
On Fire II
Blade curls as it sweats
Dulls, dries out, shrivels and twists
Flames turn green to black
.
CLP 09/06/2019
On Fire
Straw lights so quickly
Dried out, hollowed out, tinder
Full flame from nothing
.
CLP 09/06/2019
On Fire
Straw lights so quickly
Dried out, hollowed out, tinder
Full flame from nothing
.
CLP 09/06/2019
Voyage des Mots 