There Are No More Climate Poems The truth has done it again! It's giving blue earth-shattering metaphor. Her lovers are systems writing their own climate poems pastoral with denials and griefs and rages pages and pages of elegies odes and sonnets too— as if they too, like #Exxon,Knew that’s all they had to do, to write our own poem, do our part (here’s the metaphor) to drive this latest model of society when every day is dawning new research showing fossil fuels fuel stupidity, literally (also metaphor for climate disrupted by white supremacy) for folks outside inhaling, folks without cars, folks who aren’t even the cause sip deep from wellsmogs lungs crinkle at poison peaks while drivers smile just getting by, pouring pollution down lanes, painting towns red sequin-shining like oil on pavement graffiti saying our lives are not our own powered by sacrifice zones. The way worlds end (this is the way this evil twists together to get its own to eat itself) is in imprisonment in neglect, all oppressive intent. For life requires sun, what would I do without you? said the sun to the moon. Some truths are flowering earlier and earlier as you're getting warmer and warmer to solar mornings where more could avoid ritual poisonings. Choices people make every day to get by, as poets, the original system thinkers, know no one– no one poem lies alone. All truths found and extend therein there are only multi-cascading epics (here, where you step in).
— Adam Powers
About this poem
This poem was inspired by two new pieces of published research. Let me be clear and say I have only read coverage of the reports due to journal access limitations.
The title and ending come from what’s stated so beautifully by Renaissance scholar, Founder of the nonprofit EndClimateSilence, climate language researcher extraordinaire (book forthcoming!), Dr. Genevieve Guenther:
The lines “fossil fuels fuel stupidity, literally” and connection to how this is also a metaphor for white supremacy come from new research showing “How white and affluent drivers are polluting the air breathed by L.A.’s people of color” brilliantly covered by the insightful climate reporter, Sammy Roth, for the LA Times:
“our lives are not our own
powered by sacrifice zones”