Blocked - Sept 17 2024

 

Blocked

Sept 17 2024

I have run dry.

The tap turns

and spurts of murky water

squirt out

like a hacking cough;

orange with iron oxide,

black

with finely crushed gravel.

Soon, nothing at all.

The rocky seams

once torrential as Niagara

now echo emptily

in their dark cavernous depths.

Guzzling marauders

have pumped the aquifers dry;

an offering

of fossil water

harbored over eons,

now spent

in our brief and reckless profligacy.

So we look up, imploring the skies

but no rain falls,

while parched earth cracks,

the air fills with dust,

unstoppable fire

razes the land.

But while all the elements, it seems

conspire against us

we are our own worst enemy,

profiteering,

stealing and hoarding,

squabbling over rights.

Even poets have lost their voice,

gone as dry

as a scorching earth.

Because what’s the point of words

when thirst

is all you can think of?

But refugees still wander

and water wars go on.

And over all, the smell of death

lingers in the air;

cattle

left to rot where they fell,

bloated bodies

scattered on the road.

I fear the old are next

when the rations get too small

and the strong help themselves.

The ones who remember

cold clear water

and taps on full.

While standing by, like an empty faucet,

a wordless poet

lamenting their loss.

Lately, I haven’t felt moved to write. I never really understood when writers said they were blocked, because words have always come easily to me. (Actually, I can’t stop them!) Which hasn’t changed: making sentences is as compulsive as ever. So I suppose it’s more the feeling I have nothing worthwhile left to say. Certainly not anything anyone would want to hear. Or hear again.

Which, of course, is its own solution: why not a poem about being blocked, going dry?!!

But when the analogy of the tap came to me, I couldn’t help getting immediately sidetracked into (another!) poem about climate change. Especially since it’s an exceptionally hot and rainless September, and I find myself once again worrying about a dry well and forest fire.

I apologise for the apocalyptic tone. If only I could write love poems and uplifting paeans to nature. But that’s just not me. No matter what, my dark brooding pessimism almost always breaks through.