Our fate sealed with handshakes between
coal soot tycoons and media moguls
and big banks and fear-mongers
and bigots and slippery dealings and
hateful concessions and business as usual.
The echo of humanity no longer
brings comfort or false hope on a sleepless night
where the minority in white towers do not stand alone,
no, they stand in force with
the apathetic, the selfish “not in my backyard”, the grasping at jobs in mines, the “get mine”, the investors and retirees in cladded homes, the weak trembling at the feet of reform
who don’t shake the norm because it builds them houses with pools to retire in behind gates untouched.
The “I worked hard for my money” as they grasp it to their cabana and believe every lie ever told, like the powerful care if there’s not a vote to be stolen, the privatised with dead shining eyes,
the hateful and the lazy and “aspirational” who don’t care to see past their own nose, the easily manipulated
who believe the targeted campaigns and selfish jokers who snigger as the planet burns.
In the tatters, it’s the same people
who quietly and loudly do the work, pay the price, who
have paid each day since colonisers came,
since they fled, who watched on without surprise,
who continue to rise, despite the feet on their backs. The too well known hateful slurs at the curl of an identity, “unknown entity”, the same groups who
organise and retaliate and never rest,
who were born fighting,
never had a “fair go” in this “easy going” home
the same few who care to share some of it with the rest, those
who know it all means nothing
on a dead planet.