Our Lungs Are On Fire
They poured kerosene down our throats
With our mouths pried open
Some died of paraffin poisoning
Some drowned
And for the rest of us
They dropped a lit match
Can you feel your tubes filling with smoke?
Can you feel your inner linings eroding?
Can you taste the charcoal on the back of your tongue?
Coughing up the thick ash – the burned black pieces of our organs?
Our lungs are on fire
And my eyes are burning,
But the tears keep coming
I wish they could do something
Melt the fires away
But the fires stay burning
Carbon Dioxide still churning
We rape our mother
One-by-One, after another
Relentless
And the fires are still burning
The dioxide is still earning
We berate our mother
Us on top, her under
Selfish
I wonder about the birds, circling the forest
Calling their young
Their babies that couldn’t yet fly
Waiting for her return
I wonder how long the bird soars
Until its wings give
She falls onto a low hanging branch
And cries with a raspy caw unusual to hers
She turns her head and sees a familiar stow engulfed in piercing orange
And paces towards a smoldered nest with her roasted children inside
Her lungs are on fire
The anxiety,
Yes it’s hard to breathe
Harder to breathe
When your lungs are on fire
If we aren’t scared,
We are blind
If we aren’t trying
We’re all dying
Our lungs are on fire
How do we sleep
With a fire in our bodies
How do we laugh
With cinders in our teeth
Our lungs are on fire
If they’re burning the land we live off,
The animals we feed from,
The trees we breathe from,
The earth we learn from,
Do you think they won’t burn us too?
Throw us into the fire
Control their empire
Do you think they haven’t already started?
Earth sprinkled with decimated maize crops
No protection from the sun come Summer 2090
The seas rise and makes us move
The temperatures rise, and globally deplete food
Carbon Dioxide – the waste product will leave us the same
And we’ll sail on the river of lava and walk barefoot on burning coal and pretend we haven’t turned Earth into Hell
Leo Grey 