"this is sixth form poetry, not Keats or Yeats"
After Hurricane Harvey, flooding damage to oil refineries, chemical plants, and Superfund sites meant that residents in the Houston metropolitan area were exposed to increased levels of chemical pollutants, including pesticides, flame retardants, and other harmful industrial compounds.
This poem is inspired by recent research, which has created a colour catalogue to help find life on distant, frozen worlds.
Swirling underground, invisible toxins leach into view. Potent cocktails of mismanaged waste that ebb and drift and flow. Flow into wells that hide in plain
We scavenge the coastlines, in search of living, low-tech tools that carry within them the promise of our climate’s past and future tense. Geochemical proxies
Cascading from rocky peaks, you plunge into view, flowing like a fan into streams and lakes and lives. Fawning at your force we strive to
Cascading carelessly past weathered ore you slither into view against the levee’s edge. Sparkling waters that blister in the warming sun, their see-through hues a
Icy breath cascades across our asphalt arteries, meandering blockages that we incinerate with shovelfuls of salted grit; their cloying excess overspilling into unkempt reservoirs that
Golden rays of winter’s sun pierce through the roof-shingle of the channel-sky, forbidden warmth enfolding frozen robes that shudder at the touch of an assumed
Beneath mottled shells of dreary, setting suns we bury instruments in living sands; digital treasures to map the edges of existence. Caressing your carapace as
Struggling beneath the weight of accumulation you buckle in the rains; a surplus of backwash baptising you with the filthy discharge of a thousand vanquished