Tuesday, July 25, 2023

THE OILIGARCHS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley




We are living in deadly heat

We are living in a climate inferno

Growing in intensity season by season

We are living in fire


We are living in weather conditions

Created by avarice and greed

Created by the princes of petroleum

The captains of capital


We are witnessing temperatures soar

We are witnessing our fellow humans

Particularly the most vulnerable

Expire of the extreme heat –


People living on the streets

With nowhere to escape the sun

Elders with weakened immune systems

Infants whose little bodies cannot cope


The weather today:

110 degrees in Phoenix, 107 in Grand Junction

105 in Tulsa, 101 in Casper,

No relief in sight


When I was a young boy

We lived near a greenhouse

Where the neighborhood kids sometimes gathered

On sub-zero winter days


The embracing warmth

The rich, organic stink of humus

And manure and decomposing straw,

The summer-in-winter just next door


We knew why the heat couldn’t escape

Up through those hundreds of glass panes

We learned it in sixth-grade science:

The greenhouse effect


An exquisitely balanced system

That lets just the right amount of heat out

That keeps just the right amount of heat in

That makes life on earth possible


Now carbon emissions have thickened the glass

To trap more heat

To skew the ancient equilibrium

To weaponize the weather


We have protested outside office buildings

We have blockaded refinery entrances

We have ranted and chanted and invoked the future

To change the hearts and minds of the oiligarchs 


To remind them of sixth-grade science 

To remind them of the delicate balance

To demand that they cease and desist

But they won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t… stop…



Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.