An actual fracking site in Warren Center, PA
The Marcellus Shale runs under my home, Binghamton, NY
Image courtesy of WikiCommons
Frackers (and the TPs who love them)
Takin no flak from
frack-attack NRA
plushies
Takin no crap from
gumflappin’ Tea Party
Rushies
Dittoheads filled with…
(no, that’s not nice)
misinformation
Sleazy pols with vols
pandering to their meandering
with dolls from the intern pool
Pools they listen to
more than constituents
Consequently, their
incontinent pieholes spew
FOX from their boxes
(the Constitution gets the axe)
Rights only for the Right
We get what’s “left”
Two Rights can make a wrong
Look at the NeoCon bromances:
Bush and Dick
Incestuous Koch brothers
On and on, while our tap water
becomes flammable, we suck
dino juice like it’s a teat
Money for war? Sure!
Forget wind and solar –
our gas is now Natural
So natural, it seems
the hometown of my dreams
will go down in flames
from its faucets
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
I’ve written about FRACKING before, but Sherry Blue Sky, a good friend and Canadian activist, produced an excellent report (click HERE) on how the frackers are taking over in Canada, too. Got my Irish up, but at least people rose up in protest… in the States, we think of Canada as a peaceful country, but their police have been learning since the Bush years and yes, through the Obama years: Rubber bullets in LaBatts country. What the hell is going on?
This is my cheery little Monday piece for the Open Link at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads! Peace, Amy
Welcome to my 600th post!! Of course, it must be a rant… where would I be without political commentary disguised as poetry?! Thank you, all my wonderful readers, for keeping me honest and challenging me on the more controversial topics, such as today’s… (drum roll, please, Riley)
Frickin’ Frackers
Relentless, those frackers are going for bear
Digging it deep to get what’s under there
Our potable water, environment, be damned!
Exhaust every option all over the land
Washington monument cracked at its top
Virginia’s first earthquake would not make them stop
Marcellus Shale bed on North P.A.’s border
extends to New York; Andy Cuomo’s no hoarder
He says, “Frack away and to hell with the facts*,”
although we all know methane leaks through the cracks
A Vietnam vet lives in Candor, near where
I grew up with sweet well water; clean, pristine air
This vet served his country and what does he get?
Tap water that lights up, burns like a gas jet
They’re siphoning water to sell back in bottles
I wonder which politic neck I should throttle:
The one who claimed fracking is “clean, natch’ral gas,”
Or our President Obama, for letting it pass
You cannot claim conscience and turn tail on truth:
No water, no farming; no milking. Our youth
inheriting worse that our parents gave us
We Facebook, petition; we Twitter and cuss
But no one will listen will Kochs are in charge
‘cuz they’re corporate energy – they’re livin’ large
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For ABC Wednesday, now on letter F; also for Trifecta, using their chosen definition of “exhaust” as a verb.
One of the lines below my email signature is, “Citizen For Potable Water and AGAINST Hydrofracturing.” This proved problematic for a time, when one of my nephews was working for a fracking company out West; it caused friction between me and a family member… but I didn’t really care about that. The big picture is not how much money a twenty-something is making (and it was the big bucks), it’s whether or not we will leave our grandkids and five generations past that ANY drinking water. At this rate, we’re losing ground.
* For more on the dangers of hydrofracturing for natural gas, see THIS LINK from Wilderness.org. Peace, Amy
For Poets United, who asked for words about gifts, a different take.
MY GIFT TO YOU THIS THANKSGIVING: The gift of awareness, of the lies we have been taught in our schools, of the ways we can open our eyes and take action, even this late in Gaia’s game.
Call me a spoilsport, but, speaking as a person whose ancestors (ugh) came over on the (yikes) Mayflower (apologies to all Native Americans), the Thanksgiving we celebrate every year never happened. Actually, while the indigenous peoples taught the invaders (Columbus didn’t “discover” America, after all) how to plant the seeds and cultivate crops, as well as introducing them to the most hallowed of all indigenous creatures, the turkey… The Anglos paid back by enslaving their hosts, cheating them out of land “rights.”
Native Americans didn’t understand the concept of land ownership – although there were vague understandings of tribal boundaries, tribes would emigrate to the South during cold months and travel North for the yearly planting and hunting. They felt they were guests on this earth, and they treated the environment with much respect, always thinking generations ahead.
It has taken little more than two hundred years for our European ancestors to lay waste to most of this country. Even the pristeen wild fields are now endangered by hydrofracturing (creating earthquakes in order to release “natural gas.” It’s only natural if it’s underground, where it belongs… and drilling through bedrock and water tables is polluting millions of gallons of our only sources of potable water. Soon, you may see yourself buying it all from the Big Guys, who are bottling it out from under us as we speak.).
SO WHY GIVE THANKS? Because we have choices, voices. We can stop war, stop the rape of our environment, stop all the destruction, if only we get off our butts after Black Friday and Turkey Day and the ensuing football games.
WE CAN HOLD OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS ACCOUNTABLE. And yes, that includes President Obama, who needs to be reminded that there is no such thing as “clean coal,” same as “natural gas.” We need to start hunkering down on AMERICAN-MADE solar panels and wind turbines, get them onto the main power grid. We can work for better conditions for the people “on the rez,” from whom we stole the land in the first place.
We need to honor this country, the country we praise, this precious land, the reason we give thanks in the first place.
I will be taking a break this weekend to count my blessings (especially for my community of poets, my groups of rowdy activists, and the results of the last election, as well as Lex, Riley, and my wonderful birth family and family through two marriages). And I will be reading, only. Catching up on what others have commented on my blog, reading work on sites to which I have contributed but whose lists of poets I have not completely read.
Peace now – action to come… Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 