Category: 2019 Poetry

Let’s talk about the Swedish teen
Who’s been making headlines,
Appearing on screens
With Red Light warnings
About global warming
And the indifference of the masses.

Greta Thunberg –
With the might of an iceberg
She stands.
She’s stood alone and with many,
At home or abroad,
Stand does she
Stubbornly
Broad with defiance,
A “don’t fuck with me” frown
The crown of this image
Of a sixteen year old making a stand
For her unborn grandchildren.

How chilling.
How absolutely mad
That the people deemed not old enough to vote
Have had to consider
The load of trash
We’ve put on their heads,
Had to protest lest we burn the world to ash
Or make everything in it dead.
Their children will likely never see the coral reefs,
With thanks to Great Grandpa Donald
Who simply loved his beef!
Literal kids can see the pain
That will rain down on our fighting planet
Unless they right the wrongs in it.

They know the gains!
They fathom this pain
Yet refrain from disdaining
‘Cause they know they have no time.
What’s yours and mine
Today
Is theirs tomorrow,
And, oh! What sorrow
To hand to them a broken world
With one end curled
Around a self-righteous paper straw;

“What more could we have done?
We tried to rack our brains
But it’s so much slower without planes
And steak just tastes insanely great…
But, wait!
Is that a pig-tailed adolescent
Suggesting I use compact fluorescent bulbs?
Telling me to act?
The Descent of Man by Darwin
Is littered with facts
About Natural Selection
And the vital role an erection
Plays in the continuation of us!
Yet she highlights that there’s nothing natural
In what we are headed towards
And thus!
We must change our ways and reap the rewards,
Or be engulfed by our greed
And burned by rays of UV
Slicing through the O-zone layer
One of the key players In our destruction…
What an eruption!
By a sixteen year old girl
Of accusations
and blame
For the state of
Our world!”
…said those too old to live to see
An exploited planet
Down on its knees
Wheezing up the mistakes of the past,
Our vast ignorance,
With children paying the penance.

She fathoms the tremendous gains
For humankind,
All animals and birds,
But faces the pain
Of trolling and attempts to stain
Her reputation
And belittle her frustration –
It pains me to state that
She will know the pain of fame,
Thanks to pricks like Brendan O’Neill
Who claims that “she is proof that the millenarian green
Movement is messing up
The next generation”
Whilst failing to fess up
About the generous donations
His racist, fame-hungry movement on Spiked
Receives from some US oil billionaires –
Greta’s generation is the heir
Of a planet compromised for a selfish choice,
But big-man Brendan dismisses this warrior
As a “weirdo” with a “monotone voice”.

He’s sadly not the first
To express a thirst
For the humiliation of the girl
Based on her autism,
By assholes who failed in journalism
So cling desperately to controversy
And hate;
Professional click-baiters,
These dickish haters
Mean not what they say
But what they say is mean:
“Can the BBC arrange for Andrew Neil
(a right-wing attack dog always hungry for his next meal)
To interview this Greta Thunberg character?
Because I guarantee we’ll never hear from her
Again.
She may even add a meltdown on national telly
Into the bargain.”
Words apparently do not fail
Helen Dale,
But perhaps she failed them.

Most recently
And shamefully,
A name from Murdoch’s columns
Makes a less-than-solemn attack,
Most likely for attention,
But maturity seems to lack
In those mature folk with a mic
Or a pen
Who jest and joke
Poke fun and then
Condemn a movement
Based on scientific fact,
Led by a “strange girl” who shouldn’t talk back
To big men and money,
As a cult.
It’s tragically funny
That Greta must ask
“Where are the adults?”

It’s time we all halt
And consider that Adam Bolt,
Painfully desperate
For disposable fame,
Supposes he can tarnish Greta’s name
With his playground-bully claim:
“I have never seen a girl so young
And with so many mental disorders
Treated by so many adults
As a guru.”
Apparently a psychologist,
Bolt wants to argue
Against the influence of the teen
By, like others, dismissing her keen
Sense of global justice
Due to a diagnosis of Asperger’s
And wrap it up in malice
To see how far it could spread.
By the time the worst of Greta’s warnings
Become reality
And our only home warming
To the point of fatality
This pathetic man will be dead
So he has nothing to lose
And publicity to gain
By expressing disdain
For a “freakishly influential” activist.
The only thing ‘mental’
Is that this controversial columnist
Publicly attacking the younger sister
Of an unapologetic fighter
For the future
Is a 59 year old man.
This girl fights because she can.
And must.
Ask yourself which of these two people
You can trust.

No pain, no gain.
Greta knows this.
A cheap ‘dis’ in the media
won’t make her remiss
In her mission
Because the Earth’s condition is
Dire.
Her generation needs a voice
And this girl – she breathes fire.
So if you’re offended
By the blame game
Of the doomed generation
And feel no shame
For the eternal damnation of
All. Life. On. Earth.
Then listen to her again!
Because again and again and again
A gain is overlooked –
The restored harmony of nature
Where we are not hooked
On poisons and fossils,
On plastic and money.
That frown on her face
Tells us it’s not funny,
It’s not honey-glazed hippies hugging some trees
That are down on their knees
Begging us to STOP!
And consider
The wider picture,
The future gains
Or the pain they’ll endure
If we don’t cure
The disease of the consumer –
It is our youths.
And they’re talking to you.

Greta Thunberg –
Stands with the might of an iceberg
And yes – icebergs nowadays
Are up against a lot,
As it gets hotter
They vanish into the water
And become millions of extra drops
In the rising ocean.
This so-called ‘ignorant, brainwashed child’
Is enough to inspire
A million drops to bind together
And stand behind her
Against the harsh weather
Of billionaires, critics,
Bullies and corporations
And speak as a generation
Representing every last nation’s
Unborn souls.
And when the opposition
Doles out its ridicule
And criticism,
And deniers list
The endless, unobtainable things it’ll take
To fix this
And their force like that of a tsunami,
Greta, please, you listen to me –
You alone are making waves
By braving the storm
To demand reform.
The way mankind behaves
Means the fight can be tough,
But, girl, you keep on standing
And you tell them
“I. Am. Enough.”