A Poem for Earth Day and poetry month

ORANGE



silence is not orange


it is the putrid colour of menacing collusion.
Cowardice.


sometimes a poor man
sometimes a rich man


i   wonder  what gender i stand in, where my skin touches air;   what skin means
holding this humanity in form like phyllo pastry....

the translucence of my white privilege
barely creates a shadow,
cleverly hidden behind clear cut trees


what gender has been programmed in me


i see the stars again, eventually; from the gutter where I fall
broken, dirty, a chipped tooth and a found dime give me false hope


i had a loony once so dirty you couldn't see it was money


blood and oil on all our hands
blood and oil on all our hands


we wash it out with sterilized gels


poison the world
water circles around

pretending our shores aren't yours,  aren't ours

it is all pretend

we have blood on our hands

sometimes a rich man
sometimes a poor man

i am a woman turned her back on motherhood, or is it motherhood stabbed me in the back?

forced into barren-hood
hope raped by greed

i was a rich man once, now just a poor man, i wait.

i  wait.

i  wait,   we wait;  for bloodstained hands to open in a compassionate turn they've never known

to hold my newborn babe to my naked breast, the milk of human kindness,
human kindness as dry as my middle aged tit

i   lay weary and disgusted in humankind

no gender   no colour     no winner

we are all lost.    Killers.    Guilty.
with oil and blood on our    withering     greedy       hands



N. Hoeppner
 05/2015