Short Sighted Eyes
[an environmental slam poem by Shana Tinkle
written in/for the Searching For Balance: Oil and Water workshop at
Brown University, Providence, RI on October 5, 2014]
The Earth
is a circle
a cycle
a globe
A coherent whole
Of incoherent parts
Struggling
Battling
To exist together
To find Balance
Hot and cold
Day and night
Light and darkness
Land and water
Oil and water
Water and air
Oxygen
Carbon
These are the parts
The moving parts
They never stop
They just get faster
We’re turning up the treadmill
Cranking the amp
Amping the volume
The energy the speed
Constant buzzing worker bees
Building earning yearning burning running turning eating mowing laundry sewing reaping owing
Stealing raping grazing crazing
Cravenly
Covetously
Gluttonously
Greedily
Guzzling nuzzling
nozzling chugging
trenching trudging
drinking dining fine wining
Imperiously. Imperviously.
Obliviously.
In a cloak of chosen
ignorance
To shield us from our
shame
The shame we should feel
For harming our Mother
Rending her womb
Sounding her doom
Selling her blood
To power our looms
Our booms, our zooms
our zippity-do’s.
The shame we should feel
For caging, enslaving, beating, mistreating, and eating
our brothers, our sisters, our cousins
The horses and cows
Chickens and pigs
Muskrats, dolphins
bananas and figs.
We have no vision
Outside of ourselves
Melt down more oil
For the next pair of glasses
Try to see better. Clearer
Through the smoggy fog
Of our own creation.
Where will we go
When there’s no more
Paradise to explore
On vacation?
When our mother gives up
And sucks her land back in
And the islands
And their cities
Become a world of
Atlantises
And we must learn to breathe
Like fish.
The world is an accordion.
She expands and contracts
Contracts and expands
Just like us.
We learn it from her
From her seasons, her cycles,
The sun, the moon
Our lungs
Breathing In
Breathing Out
One for me
One for tree
Both for both
In harmony
In rhythm.
We all have poisons we must expel
But will there be enough fungus
to sell?
Enough mushrooms to go around
To save us from ourselves?
Too soon to tell, perhaps.
Perhaps too late
To slow it all down
To reverse the chain of destruction
Corruption
Already raining down
Our acid rain
Our soapy drains
Our eclectic blends of toxic swill
To pump and drill
Disrupting the cycles
With grids and bars
With dams
of damnation
Much worse than what
beavers build…
Our goals, collective
Now seem somewhat
Out of control
Our accordion’s burst
We played it too hard
Now no more music may sound.
Sometimes this Earth
Can be so Grand
Cosmically huge, impossible
to see, to do, to go, to draw, to cover it all
Even to gesture at the attempt is
Feeble
Frustrating
All while it’s sustaining
And far more entertaining
Than our glum evening news
I wish, for one, to see it all.
Explore, discover, taste, swim, climb and enjoy
I know it’s impossible.
But still, I must try.
Sometimes the air goes out,
the earth contracts
Community
Family
Communication
It brings us close
As though the two sides of the globe
Might one day meet
And kiss
Embrace, and applaud each other
Without violence
Must we dig a hole to China first?
I’m not convinced
that shit can work.
The Earth’s core
Our mother’s heart
Center
Burns too hot for us
No water down there
Only carbon
Minerals
Oil
That would chafe and boil us Alive
Long before
we reach the other side
But still. We can try.
To trek. Traverse. To sail.
To see the sun rise
From a new direction
A new perception brought on by
A little Perspective.
We are not large like our Mother.
Not yet. Probably never.
We may not outgrow her.
We have nothing to show her.
Our perspective is limited
To the things
We can see.