This is the only poem in my book “Burn Down The Children’s Playground”. It is a plea from all children and youngsters to their parents to finally do something to make a better world for the future.
Whether climate, politics, poverty, fascism or many other negative aspects of modern day life, it has to stop. However it is the older adults that fail to do anything. Most of them are parents or grandparents. Surely most of them want their kids to have a safe and green future? Then do something – now!
Hey, Parents!
It’s in your head, you know it’s there,
yet it seems as if you just don’t care.
But you do, we know you do.
And we know you too…
You are all the ones
who don’t like guns,
and who love our Planet Earth.
But, for what it’s worth,
you may as well not give a damn,
cos there’s not one little gram
that stops you looking over your shoulder.
You are just getting older
and looking back at your past,
you thought it would always last.
But whilst you played and profitably earned,
and gave your kids whatever they yearned,
it happened all over our planet,
whilst we lived like a greedy gannet.
Poverty, war and corruption,
and nature dying of consumption.
We saw it every day in the news,
but that showed us merely distant views.
We could switch it off, forget it all,
just carry on having a ball.
But slowly we found we were no longer in heaven,
it all began with 9/11.
Then populations split over the huge migrations.
We had forgotten what we did to their nations.
And we knew that we could not continue to pollute
as we drove, one per car, in the daily commute.
But we did, we still do,
you do those things too.
Things that make earth’s chances drastic,
like buying food wrapped in plastic.
We see glaciers collapsing and forests burning,
but we carry on, no thought of turning.
We still burn coal on our Sunday grills,
while we forget the continual ills
of the bombed kids in the Yemen.
Don’t bother to pray and say amen.
It won’t help the starving people.
So slide down off that church steeple.
Get out of your S.U.V.
And finally get to see
that your children will suffer the same fate
as the nomads who can’t remember the last time they ate.
And your grandchildren too
will not be able to view
the lush lands that we can enjoy.
Because they will then need to employ
their fingernails to scratch out the sand
from the dried-out, once fertile land,
just to plant some seeds
or eat some weeds.
For that is our gift to our offspring,
unless we do just that one thing:
ACT NOW,
that is how.
Copyright © 30.01.2022 – Kevin Mahoney