Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Poetry: 'Sediment & Sepulcher'

Let us burn our dead in furnaces for fuel
Like the carbon-rich corpses
of the plankton lost at sea
that drift downward deft & steadily
From their epipelagic throne
- deposed, entomed in sweet repose -
'til Earthen throws or We obtain
by dint of drain we'll reign
In warmth the plankton thrive,
but for their insatiability
None to check their rampant bloom
Their very lives and those they fed
await in dead and fix them room;
a sedimentary tomb; 
a carbon coffer womb

The carbon age upon us
The carbon cage surrounds
A prison which adorns those
found bound by such compounds
A warmth that we've enjoyed
Soon a heat to scald the skin
We bathe in oil; this perfect foil
Much to man's chagrin
a carbon tale is told us
The earth prognosticates
With nothing to restrain mankind
from razing at their pace

While what we're here to service

lay dead beneath our feet
When all that we rely upon
is gone or very scarce
Like dead decaying plankton

which sink and settle down
This ship: Exceptionalism
will also run aground

We, as oil & shale, may live to tell the tale
In coming times when future kind
unearths us in their wells
Mayhap they'll blaze our children's graves,
ignoring precedent,
to reap the warmth of ancient sunlight
trapped in sediment.