Poetry Hallway - Hot Air

In the long tailwind of the COP21 aftermath, a spattered crapulence of empty words and death sentences, it can be easy to get downhearted. But the solutions are all around us. Real change will only be effected by people using their anger in a positive way to improve this country's energy policy, scrap by scrap. Think small-scale, local, think divestment from fossil fuels. What is your council's attitude? Beware!'s regular contributor, noted poet and campaigner Andrew Walton has a book of stirring environmental verse entitled "Little Green Poetry". Here's an apropos poem he's recently updated:

 

 

 

 Hot Air

Cameron exhales with intent. (Andy Brain)

Trains trundle to and fro, tired travellers
Stuffed sardines stifle in squalor
First-class fat cats with fatter wallets
Relax, remote from the raucous riff-raff.

Six hundred hypocritical half-wits howl hot
Air against applications; altercations arise –
Irate imprecations, impossible implications.
Wind turbines? Not In My Back Yard!

Motorway madness means mollycoddling motorists
Belching bellicose blasts, bloated backbenchers
Pork on Parliamentary privilege,
Gigantic guffs of hot air.

Cameron points accusingly
Crotch-deep in flood water,
Après moi la deluge – a modern Canute
Eclipsed by climate change.

If only Nature could be given wings
And the Earth’s glacial warming
Measured in a five-year term.

On the distant banks of the Thames
No cuts to flood defences here.
The barrier bursts open,
Foetid algal slurry laps
Around hems of designer suits,
Ruining pairs of Jimmy Choos.

Maybe, the message might just prick
Empty balloons of pomposity and privilege.

Or we could just take power ourselves.
We would not have to suffer
Yet more hot air.

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You can hear Andrew performing this poem as part of Beware! Vision Vol 3: Andrew Walton 20/10/13, a free download via Bandcamp and the Free Music Archive.