TOXIC GREED (Big Tent Poetry prompt, a pantoum)
If only they hadn’t found uses for it
Melted, fermented dinosaur drool
Sucked out of the ground greedily
Made to serve a multitude of machines
Melted, fermented dinosaur drool
Landowners became oil barons; poor man became roughnecks
Made to serve the multitude of machines
Corporate and automotive, tapping earth’s vein
Human nature generates change
Society slid into needing the stuff
True addiction – never enough
Willing to pay any price
Society slid into need the stuff
So much that wars were cloaked in rhetoric to get it
Willing to pay any price
Blithely sending our youth to even a mythical score
Then came another reminder about values
Careless companies, relieved of safety rules by officials bought and paid for
Caused a catastrophe in a cradle of marine life and family businesses
Gushing rushing to shore, killing all in its wake
Careless companies, relieved of safety rules by officials bought and paid for
have forced on us a toxic, sickening, cancerous mess
Gushing rushing to shore, killing all in it wake
…except the CEOs, their golden parachutes at the ready
© 2010 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Sharp Little Pencil 
Sharp Little Pencil
Oops, there are supposed to be breaks that make this a series of four-line stanzas. Use your imagination. We were supposed to write a pantoun (go to Big Tent Poetry and give it a try!) about anger. I imagine there will be plenty of folks writing on this topic… wish it weren’t so.
pamela
This is well done on a subject which is so heartbreaking
I cannot even watch this on the news!
Pamela
Sharp Little Pencil
I have stopped watching the news and have used that time to spend more of it in prayer and in activism, calling and emailed the president and members of Congress to step in, put some unemployed people to work in the Gulf (WITH hazmat protection; they can only work 20-min shifts, so many folks are needed) and funding it by… getting out of Afghanistan! There, now you know all about my politics, too. But watching the news is a waste unless it’s BBC, because they are the only ones really covering it.
Gemma@Greyscale
The bitter “golden parachute” at the end is perhaps the most awful image of all! Fool’s gold, in the end, is not worth possession.