Scorched Earth
A Poem by Melissa Adelaide
Olive trees burn While the ice caps melt While the oceans all rise And the hurricanes felt With more force More anger More destruction More pain While holocaust survivors scream not in our name A child goes hungry As the polar bear does Not one, but one million Who all have lost love And safety And comfort And futures And friends While orphans cry silently On their rubble beds
While the cobalt And copper And nickel And gold Are stolen and plundered But their stories aren’t told How lands full of culture And history And song Are forced into slavery And refugee camps Famine and depravity Their suffering prolonged While taxes collected are shipped overseas Enough to bring any country to its knees So they’re stuck in a cycle of poverty and despair And a coup is staged if resistance is dared While they’re painted as uncivilized Barbaric Uncouth Heaven forbid we all knew the truth
That textiles And music And flavor of food Are gifts of the place Where our DNA takes root You can’t afford clothes So fast fashion keeps growing While the Uyghurs are tortured And the world stays unknowing Of the camps And forced labor And corrupt supply chains The masses exploited for personal gain While the rest of us smile Clock in And clock out The hustle and bustle Just moving about While they keep us infighting Over trivial things A silly little game So the world stays the same
They steal our water And our land And our health And our hope And sell it back at twice the cost While we try to stay afloat They dump their toxic poison In our riversAnd our lakes To make a profit they will do whatever it takes They don’t care about lives lost From the rabbit And the fox To the humans And the trees We get ulcers And cancers And asthma And we struggle to conceive You’ve been convinced Or maybe you’ve convinced yourself That it’s not interconnected Placed neatly on your shelves In separate containers And boxes And books But if you put it together And gave it a look You’d see we’re being consumed By that top one percent Who sit high in their ivory Sipping champagne While we’re left with breadcrumbs And mountains of shame That we didn’t make it That it’s the way that it goes Some are just born to experience lows But the bar just gets lower And higher above Now both parents are working Two jobs night and day And our children are lonely And the bills still aren’t paid And we’re making excuses for genocide How could we EVER let that slide? They said never again But it was all for show When the powers see something they want Now we all know They’ll burn the ground And the trees And the seas And the skies So long as their greed is satisfied So the cycle continues Destruction and death Torture and bombings Drowning in debt Just to be educated Til we take our last breath Because you can’t put it together Or take a step back Or see it in depth And realize that your liberation And mine And theirs Are all intertwined
Melissa Adelaide is a volunteer with CODEPINK’s D.C. congressional advocacy team. She is a mom of two beautiful babies who believes they deserve a better world. She believes it is our duty to as human’s to see each other’s children as our own, and fight for them in the same way we would fight for our own. You can follow more of her poetry at at Late Bloomers:
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