On Fire: A Poem About The Planet

45 ARTS ON FIRE: A Poem About The Planet After seeing images of the fires in the Amazon, Impact’s Arts Editor turns her pen to exploring the damage we are causing to the environment in her poem ‘On Fire’.

The lungs of the world are on fire But life goes on And we don’t mind

we need our meat as species after species gets crossed off an extinction bingo, carving up corpses with plastic cutlery, carving up forests to crackle in flames but life goes on and we don’t mind

we don’t feel the flames forget this climate crisis is causing each heatwave, these temperatures unprecedented and unseasonal but it’s unreasonable to complain when the sun’s shining, let’s lie on a lounger and roast our skin instead, only grumbling when infrastructure buckles

trains get cancelled

because our world was not built for this but life goes on and we don’t mind

we do our bit put out the recycling out of sight, out of mind, the pummelled plastic not reused or reduced but constantly consumed then shipped off to other nations turn their shores to wastelands turn the seas to polymer plastic but life goes on and we don’t mind

we’ll go shopping instead for tonnes of cotton in the shape of a sweatshop t-shirt

(sweated in once then never worn again) so go buy another, if you spend enough you might just fill up the plastic rattle of an empty heart as the world goes round and life goes on

children and teens take to the streets in school uniform but grownups who’ve grown up in a society that wants it all shake their heads, knowing best, ignoring any evidence of catastrophe, belittling a teenager sailing the Atlantic

to tell the powers that be in their ageing, male glory to stop snoring, wake up smell the smoke of a world that is dying in our hands.

Lauren Winson Illustration & Page Design by Natasha Phang-Lee