Flaring

In Iraq, gas flaring
twists and breaks the children’s veins,
they cut them short, they let them lie
like flowers.
BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell,
In the boardrooms of the Western world,
incendiary voices reverberate
amongst wheat and barley fields.
BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell,
smart gowns, coffee, tea,
mineral water and poisson trees.
The girl is dead, the boy is sick,
and the table is set.
Cancer is the feast.
The last thing she said
was she wanted to get better,
the last clothes she wore lie in her mother’s bed.
There is no heart beating,
no cuddle or kiss.
A mother is wringing, draining, her daughter’s clothes:
fear, pain, hope.
Fault, blame, crime,
if the gas is flaring and
spares the rigid sky, the anxious rock,
infertile soil, there is no wrong.
Black soup, with oily bread,
chokes your throat, tears your marrow bone,
opens holes in your vest, your lungs,
torn.
BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell.
The drilling
roars to deafen their boardroom talk,
shares, jet planes, COP 28,
and production rises again.
BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell.