Happy Birthday to Me!

I turn fifty-seven tomorrow. If I'm lucky my daughter won't have to work and will take me to lunch. Nev is buying dinner and then going to a local poetry night with me. My life is so privileged in an unjust world.

Instead of wallowing in my guilt at my good fortune, I will share with you the poem that I wrote, intending to read it during the "open mike" section.

The Inter-Galactic Greenie

 

I wanted to write a poem

A grand poem to be read in public.

It would be as rhythmic as a ballad by Banjo

And as moving as a passage from Eliot

(But less obscure)

And it would make you smile.

But I’m not a fancy poet

Just a mediocre story-teller.

 

I found some perfect lines

While I was putting out the compost

But the dog tripped me up.

I didn’t spill the smelly vegies

Just lost my words.

I had a story I wanted to tell,

Of an alien who came

To try and save the planet

From environmental disaster.

His arrival would be quiet, but spectacular,

And he would look like an intergalactic frog

In a weird, black suit,

With a voice that chirped.

 

I tried to make it rhyme –

I was aiming for a ballad –

There were words I wanted the alien

To pronounce emphatically:

“I have looked into your future

And it’s hot and harsh and dead;

If you don’t change the way you live

There’s no life on Earth ahead.”

 

But, as always, it just sounded like doggerel to me;

And I didn’t think any-one would find it particularly persuasive,

Especially as I couldn’t find a way

To say what I really wanted.

Like my alien I didn’t “want to give offense

Despite people being so very dense”

And my ragged words can not capture

The burning prophet in my soul . . .

 

You see, when I turn around to face

The mammoth in the room,

The environmental time bomb

To which we all contribute,

I can’t seem to communicate the sense of panic that I feel

The certainty that we are killing ourselves

And my words shrivel up

And die.

 

Words are no good any more;

It’s action that the world needs,

Change on a global scale,

But people just keep throwing their hands in the air

Saying, “What can I do?”

We no longer believe in people power –

We ignore the bleak future – the inevitable payback for our
Investment in our comfortable lives.

So, the world will miss the irony of my final stanza

When the alien admits that he’s a galactic greenie
Come to save the human race,
A seriously endangered species,
From its greatest threat – itself.
And I wonder if there is any-one else
Out there shouting into the void
Who has words to reach the deaf.
 
Is there any-one out there . . .
Who can convince us to save ourselves?