Picture from: Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
Poisoned Skies.
Embers burn the amort world.
Beshrew is she now,
Your ‘home’ an egregious mistake
You made the beds
Cleanly now, freshly made sheets, quickly now
for you are safe. Your children told you,
The fire that haunts the deer
The paths covered by flames.
trapped by a storm and flinty minds.
trapped by poised air from different soil,
trapped by the limits of evolution.
they aid the recent and ignore the inevitable.
She will rebuild for what you took from her.
the life she created will be reclaimed,
experimental subjects will be the soil beneath.
Your words are the sentence, your breath the execution.
Fact means nothing to the upper crust,
only what came from the open air.
Reacting only makes it worse,
So how do you sell clean air?
The article that inspired the poem:
Where Australia’s smoke goes to die.
My poem:
My reflection:
Poem Composition:
I really liked the Plastic Mask of Self-Unknown by Nick Dermott. I showed how consumerism has taken over how we see ourselves and others through lenses that shouldn’t be there and have been rooted within society for as long as I can remember. It shows a future we could be headed towards, in the sense of purchasing everything including a personality. These days it seems that even relationships can be bought for money. I love how immersive and detailed the poet made the poem for the readers to be able to feel the same emotions the poet had about the current happenings going on around us.