Oh be quiet noisy neighbours
With your racket late at night
And children screaming out so loud
In the light of moonlight
For you’re being such a nuisance
As we try to get to sleep
So hush now rowdy neighbours
And more sociable hours keep!!
For every night at midnight
We really do not care
For boozy brawls and hysterics
It simply isn’t fair
And though it might be summer
As the lighter hours increase
Consider those who’ve gone to bed
And keep the dratted peace!
I wonder if we never cleaned
What would happen to this place
Would it vanish in clouds of dust
A dirty huge disgrace
Or would it simply just become
A layered ball full of fluff
That we would grow accustomed to
And not get then give a stuff
Or is this dust a man-made thing
From all our cleaning ways?
And clutter that we hoard and keep
Throughout our earthbound days
So that by not then cleaning
The dust just then conceals
The bits and bobs that cause the mess
Does it otherwise reveal?
Reveal ourselves as dust makers
The dirt creators dream
And not really as clean as we
Might like always to seem
For tidy, messy, clean or not
The thing with humanity
Is that each one of us has made
Our planet quite dirty!
And yet we don’t all notice
We don’t stop and see the mess
This over burned home we have
That’s crying from the stress
Of pollution and waste products
Dirty water and disease
I wonder if we never clean
Will her anguish ever ease?
The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Call it rubbish – call it garbage
Call it anything you will
But what it sadly constitutes
Is far too much landfill
Destruction of our planet
Corroding to the core
But still we keep on dumping
Just more and more and more
The earth so overwhelmed
With the rot and with the grime
The pollution that gets dug into
It’s crust time after time
With chemicals and toxins
Seeping out to violate
Natures’ homeostasis
Corrupted – what a fate
And still the rubbish builds up
In environmental strife
As tears of acid rain cascade
Is this the end of life?
A million tears spilt in a lake
A thousand shattered stars
A hundred broken hearts and souls
No dreams to keep in jars
No hope to hold in weakened hands
No peace from death’s dark clench
Nor safety ‘gainst the rotten tide
Just stagnant filthy stench
The stench of dirty water in
A river of disease
Infested microscopic bugs
No escape and no ease
Where water does not heal and mend
Instead contains the curse
To infiltrate, to kill, to maim
To go from bad to worse
Infected with the carcass of
A dead decaying beast
Polluted from industrial
Waste not last or least
Contaminated, so unclean
Just rotten to the core
The one thing that should be so clean
Now contains sewage raw
Where vile atomic cells await
Their victims to attack
And water; essence of each life
Has poison on its back
And children know not what they drink
What ills so very grim
Where water once the source of life
Consumes the small victim
A million tears spilt in a lake
A thousand shattered stars
A hundred broken hearts and souls
No dreams to keep in jars
Using a dirty water source at Acholi Dumu Village. (Photo credit: Ryan’s Well Foundation)
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