At The Very Least/Climate Change Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

This partial embalming
Casts doubts on everything
I will take action I tell myself
But the plot to slay thoughts
Is in the way the bullock
Its horns gore into my soul
Making me bleed internally unseen
Like a hidden mummy laid there
Yet unheard, unseen and unknown
By a lukewarm world that pollutes
As if spitting on its face
And heeds no warning from the gods.
At the very least
I could open my eyes
Or shut them by choice
Not with the blindness of ignorance
For such is the wave of today's heat.

It is difficult to see myself
Lying there rusting away
Having lived for just these years
Telling the world there is still life in me
There is still breath in this container
Of life that walks and sniffs the air
My nose breathing it voraciously
Yet feeling like further from my truths
At the very least
I could open my nostrils wide
And walk towards my own sunset
Not shared by all of us
Who are partially entering the tomb slowly
As it yields falling on us.

I find it unbelievable
This partial embalming of me
As I go forward unable one minute
Able the next
Moving like there's a fire in me
Stationary the next like a burnt log
If I will take action
Let it be now I tell myself
At the very least
I could open my clenched fingers
And let the words fall through them
Like stalagmites and stalactites in a cave
That stand to stab into it forever
This world, this space that is me
They stubbornly stick out
To stab the mind of a feeling listener
Who is not watching the death called life
And takes words from the pain
And agrees to speak unspoken truths
That stab my burning self forever
To bring justice for my killing,
For our world is really under attack.

Who said I would not stand in the ring
Watching the fighters at it daily
Their health behind the masks
For polluted air threatens
Like a wave of deadly steam
That deceptively warms the insides of the heart
When it sidles inside unseen
And renders me seemingly well
Yet walking the streets everyday
Like walking to my end
At the very least
I could dig my grave openly
Knowing I will lie in it in time
A person who protested
That at the very least
Companies could clear the air
So I can breathe less dirt.

We all need to sing a song of protest
As the earth warms to soaring heat
Scorching the earthworms that we are
Living on sea shores that rise to heights
Drowning lands where we once lived
A new song of 'not any more, '
For if we raise our voices like the water
Ferocious waves of us protesting
Singing along with the world
At the very least the song will say
You could spare us the trouble.
The cows will join as will gorillas around us
In the farms of lands far and near
With snarls, screams and sneers
Looking for grass where there is none
The world has gone where no animal dares
When we thought it had gone to the dogs
It had gone to the money makers.