Evening shadows lengthening
temperatures nosediving
summer turned to fall
a while back already
but it was so warm the whole time
that we didn’t notice.
Record warm of course,
hockeystick, off-the-graph warm.
But now
all that pent-up autumn energy
all that stored-up turning and dying
has burst into the open.
The trees, suddenly, display their
curled up leaves with a flourish
as landscapes, cityscapes even
remake themselves
into wild expressionist paintings
splashing their colour
all across
streets, riverbanks, parks and hillsides.
The world
was moving so slowly
we thought she had stopped.
But she was just coiling,
winding, getting ready
to unleash
everything she has lined up for us.
So who are we to be surprised
by such things as autumn
or an ice-shelf breaking free
or a species going extinct?
Who are we to find
a category 5 tornado
– here’s to you, Acapulco –
something out of the ordinary
or crop failures
coral bleachings
unbearable heatwaves
wildfire zones that stretch across continents
or the lungs of the planet
parched, drought-striken, dead?
Aren’t these the things
that we’ve been pushing for these last thirty years?
Aren’t these the things
that we’ve been daring her
to bring forth?
Perhaps we should think ourselves lucky
that autumn comes at all
and more or less at the time we expect it.
Shadows are lengthening now
things will be getting weirder
and more frightening
from here on in.
What are we to make of it?
Those others
those in power
and those friends of power
power-junkies, haters, money-men, and lovers of violence
have already decided what to make of it.
They will make:
dictatorship
war
discrimination
apartheid
walls, cages, and hell on earth
while they watch the catastrophe
run its course.
They will watch their profits grow
as climate extremes give way to tipping points
that give way to cascading disasters
of overstepped
Earth system boundaries
to produce an ever more irreparable
clusterfuck
of mutually reinforcing calamities.
They will
deny,
dissemble
prevaricate
lie
procrastinate
pass laws
declare states of emergency
clamp down
backlash
scapegoat
arrest
and do everything they can
to preserve their power, their money, their short-term gain.
And believe me, they are far along with their plans.
And what are we to make of it?
We, the
lovers, teachers, children, parents, students
music-makers, artists, singers, listeners
everyday go-to-workers
the too old, the too young,
the not right
the queer, the foreign, the incorrectly pigmented
the butch, the femme and all those in between
those who’ve come to this their chosen place, sex,
personhood
by birth canal
or other means of transport,
other modes of becoming
We’ll make
a connection, a talking,
a communication, a coalescence
a getting ourselves together
an organising
an overcoming
a walking off the job
and into the street
a refusal
an affirmation
a stop-and-think
a dreaming
an insistence
a coordination
a resistance
a revolution.
We will turn this world around
because, it seems
no-one else is going to do it for us.
Not for us the incremental
the piecemeal
the bit-by-bit
the change so slow
you might be forgiven
for mistaking it
for stasis
or a going backwards
to darker times.
No, this is a time of explosive earth energy
a time of coming apart
a downfall
an implosion
a dissolution
an end to the world as we know it
like it or not.
You thought your world so far was shit
let’s face it, that’s the way we treated her
but future people will look back on this as a golden age
an age we threw away
a planet we were too lazy to look after
and rulers we were too sated to overthrow.
They will envy us
and they will curse us
for our inaction.
But change is coming
like it or not.
climate breakdown is coming
famine is coming
fascism is coming.
And for that
there’s only one cure
and that’s
get organised, get organised, get organised.