the good people & the bad,
salvation or damnation if you want to be happy don’t look at things that make you sad i don’t want to make you look sad but they’ll have to use the letters for names again & again — nothing but letters most named storms latest named storm an environmental toolkit could save you if you had one just follow your bushfire survival plan local people called it paradise but yr safest option is to leave now a positive southern annular mode spells big big trouble always 40 ducks, 25 chicken, 11 geese, & 1 man under a motorway bridge submarine earth: it just happened so quickly: the water thigh-level you try to save some things but in reality, you just couldn’t the majority of them are having to eat bugs, selling farm implements we’ve been living on the embankment for 6 mo. & we have no warm clothes challenges to their ethnic survival emotional, mental, spiritual health when honeybees smelled the smoke, it was like a fire drill on a submarine es algo bueno, i hear from downstairs i could walk across the bay in winter shifting baseline syndrome fries an egg on the sidewalk just wait for the normals to catch up the sun throws light across the floor
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59% of americans say
“the earth will be eco-friendly by 2042,” with 0% waste & 100% renewable energy, and i say, “what planet do they live on?” the planet where they don’t read the news. “the survey also suggests that americans tend to ignore their personal responsibility & feel their own carbon footprint* is not making an impact on the warming world.” planet denial -- or as we call it in america, “optimism.” “everything’s going to turn out just fine. now please get the hell outa my lane!” in 2020: more than 3 billion humans face water shortages; more than 1.5 billion humans face “severe water scarcity or even drought”: per capita water ↓ 20% in 20 yrs (this per the u.n., but then they’re always warning us about stuff, right?) 2 major hurricanes in november (1st time that’s every happened) 2 biggest fires in colorado history still burn, despite being snowed upon (zombie fires — they’re not just for siberia anymore!) & across the west, kids breathed in the smoke, too; looks like breathing it in can cause “genetic changes in children’s immune cells” (don’t even ask me about what it does to animals) as for the news, let’s telescope things: orange-sized hail in n. s. africa; cyclone hits tamil nadu; 1k homes flooded in c. sumatra; temps in 110s in n.s.w.; “inner city of são paulo totally flooded”; ef-2 ‘nado hits near dallas; 200 israelis rescued from floodwaters; so hopefully, reading it scrunched together will feel scarier than a drip drip drip — because we are an optimistic people. and as long as we hold onto a glimmer of hope, we will do nothing. ______________________ * 17 tons/yr. on avg. Of those who tried to estimate their footprint, ⅔ weren’t even close. . . . & the fourth frog thinks
“how could anyone worry about boiling alive at a time like this? there’s a pandemic on! we have more urgent things to think about” (this, before they are “done,” when they don’t think anything) but i am determined to have as much hope as the young folks & act accordingly; although i am determined to write a chronicle as factual as i. when hitler gave a “scorched- earth” order, the officer in the fürerbunker refused; but our embunkered president put fanatikers in place who proceed with the scorching apace, while “scientists consider wild plan to dim the sun to save earth” (i’d like to have dim sum with those dim bulbs on an unsaved earth), while cambridge, mass. will stick warning labels on gas pumps (“the surgeon general has determined that burning fossil fuels,” etc.): one does what one can, based on what one thinks one knows e.g., “underwater heat blob” unfreezing the arctic, un- locking airborne heat blobs so that moscow could be snow-free in dec. last year & toronto just concluded warmest- ever stretch of november temps on sunday, w/almost 8” of snow (most on nov. 22 since 1937) funny weather they’ve been having, huh? things are gettin hella wonky: “roller-coaster” would fit as metaphor, if roller-coasters went underwater for days at a time & it’s what happens after the disaster that’s disastrous: the ash in your drinking water; the sewage- filled water in your streets; your food shortages; people crowded in shelters during a pandemic; 100s of 1000s more shelterless, a future designed by jerry bruckheimer people in somalia walking through waist-high water, floating their stuff on rafts; baghdad streets submerged; in s. sudan, bashir james sez “getting wet wasn’t an issue. currents and crocodiles were” -- & even the old folks can’t remember this much rain . . . (“whatevuh — sh*thole countries” -- after we got finished with them, anyhow) i promise not to be surprised if, once upon a future day, i feel nostalgic for 2020, or feel like it served me well as practice so, the cartoon shows two frogs,
sitting in a pot of water; one reads the paper w/a head- line “vaccine’s coming” & sez “yay, some good news!” while the pot is licked by flames under- neath, labelled “climate crisis.” why are editorial cartoons so seldom funny? unless maybe you are some god, watching some farce play out b/c remember that massive drop in co2 emissions last spring? well, turns out it didn’t stop the concentrations from rising exponentially; but at the time we sed yay some good news. but now, some slightly- less-bad news wd be welcome. but weather news is not the place to find it: e.g., first hurricane ever to strike somalia struck yesterday, the strongest ever measured in the n. indian ocean (warmer ocean temps = strong storms, it turns out); while in honduras, shelters filled up fast, so victims of eta & iota sleep rough under overpasses, neighborhoods still flooded; “what will we have when we go back? nothing,” sez “housewife irma sarmiento”; & tides are getting higher in charleston (s.c.); basketweaver vickie hicks tell us “god is taking back his land”; & from the wtf dept.: tornado in ontario; tornado warnings on cape cod & martha’s vineyard; but in e. cape, south africa's biggest-ever tornado touched down — 1000s houseless, roofless humans, swaddled in “disaster blankets.” meanwhile 3.4 m acres burned in bolivia this yr, in the midst of massive drought; the guaraní people who live there, like aldemar flores, say “the lack of water is suffocating our communities. . . . they can’t plant, and the livestock begin to die”; & scientists report 1200-3000 “excess deaths” from california wildfires this year (all that smoke); & as the smoke clears from last month’s massive wildfire in new zealand, “fire & emergency” advises “have a non-flammable doormat” (among other things); & did i mention that europe recorded its hottest-ever oct.? anyway. in that cartoon (in my imaginary version), the next frame shows the other three frogs, thinking, “boiling will affect other frogs, but not me”; or “global boiling is a hoax perpetrated by frogs in the deep pot”; & the last frame shows the poor frogs, bloated bellies up, long stiffened legs stretched taught, coming along nicely are you a weed?
wow. wow. what is that down in the roots & tubers of your alveoli? nothing can auto- correct for this not carbon capture, not hydroxywhatevah. i feel so so nostalgic for rationality. “this can’t be happening. it’s not real,” sez the dying covid patient. no weeds ever. the multiple typhoons in the philipines can’t be happening; the stationary downpour in nicaragua is not real; the human bodies they’re digging out in honduras are maybe mannequins; the freezing typhoon in vladivostok can’t be happening; the record rain in seoul is not real; the displaced people in java don’t exist; the locusts in victoria can’t be there; the tennis-ball-sized hailstones in s. africa definitely are not real; 90-degree temps in the u.s. can’t be happening in nov.; the new wildfires in california & nevada are not real — just ask the 1k humans who were not evac’d; 2,556 additional people did not die of heat stroke in britain this summer; the record hi-lo in demark wed. nite never happened (even the weather news is fake!); the melting subsea permafrost & shallow methane hydrates bubbling up in concentrations of atmospheric methane above the fields (86x more potent than co2 as green- house gas) reaching 16-32ppm is so so not real b/c so so boring, & is so not the thing that’s going to kill us all; and most of all, remember: this verse-chronicle will never ever come to an end. the wind
the wind the wind the wind when wilt thou blow a sea of seeds drifting over tall grass it really does roar around here — where hi’s have run 10 degrees f above normal this month -- it looks like a dry & roaring winter is a-comin’ in 50 mph gusts — no tornado, no microburst, no derecho, just wind and wind and wind maybe will prove our fate but better than 200 mph gusts: that’s what nicaragua got out of #30 named storm iota: an almost-cat 5, the kind that only hits 1ce in 37 yrs, but it’s the second in 2 weeks . . . 62k humans in govt. shelters, houses not one iota left & ½ m w/o power in n.e. u.s. mon., toppled trees & power lines, ripped roofs from louisville to boston, tornado warning in n.y.c. latest-ever 90f temp in phoenix (last summer arizona’s hottest); new zealand: this winter hottest ever while in tabasco state in mexico, 72,000 humans homeless after govt. opened dam spill- ways after flooding from eta & they’ve got water up to their eaves in bulacan province, philipines; president blames typhoons on global heating & calls for those responsible (us) to pay to clean up after it no rains large or small around here — desiccated fall drops down: leaves fly seed-puffs fly by (masive limb just missed the house) what heraklitos sez: everything flies better get used to it, kid . . . 229 days at ≥ 50 f in nederland:
yep, a record. (meteorologist sez: “this is quite special”) crimea dries up: worst water shortage in 150 yrs of records; reservoir bottoms crack in open air, people drill farther down “in desperation” ≥ 69 humans dead in philipines after hurricane vamco, + power out in manila (21st typhoon this season — nothing on atlantic’s 30, but pacific’s even stronger), 1000s rescued from dam break, as duterte jokes w/officials re: having “too many women” lol & c. america still wallowing in massive damage from hurricane eta, wch “in 36 hrs went from depression to a v. strong cat 4 — probably the fastest spinup to a major hurricane in history,” sez cli-sci guy (just get out of bed & stand up, joe have another pot of coffee, before the price spikes) “marine heatwave” off new zealand; land heatwave in queensland, au.; wettest nov. ever in perth ranchers in the west u.s. sell off their herds, as drought turns grassland into weeds finally, watch this “heartwarming” video of polar bears climbing into a garbage truck (“look! -- babies!”) & then to go back & hibernate some more good evening, mr. & mrs.
earth: here's the news from the news-from-poems dept.: . . . 28% of world’s largest wetland, the pantanal in s. america, burns. it makes up 3% of the total wetlands on the planet. wetlands are the best carbon sinks on the planet -- or the best carbon-emitters, when they burn . . . but now i’m talking about concepts . . . not as compelling as 100s of human beings buried when half a mountain shuffles down on 'em or 200k humans evac’d in c. america after hurricane eta, as another cyclone burbles up & heads their way: “we have a covid situation, we have dengue, we have other vectors we are monitoring. now we are waiting for the development of the next storm” -- while n. carolina gets the dregs of eta, w/10” of rain, 7 dead from all the ways people die in flash floods & in the rest of the u.s., most of us remain in or enter into drought territory (imaginary review of this verse-chronicle: “doom scrolling with literary pretensions”) what else? let’s see . . . north pole temp rose above freezing yesterday . . . hottest oct. ever in c. russia . . . yesterday a.m. woke up to 27 f here; but p.e.i., canada, started their day at 61 . . . record hi’s in maine, record lo’s in the sierras . . . (you can get the “long-term trends” from noaa and epa & shit like that: we give you live-action x-tremes in front of your face -- blow-up action, baby! b/c otherwise, nothing gets yr attention) 53k i.d.p.’s (internally-displaced people) so far, in somalia’s seasonal rains (i.e., floods) . . . & philipines slammed by yet another typhoon, 39 dead, 32 missing — 350k evac’d: all this, after hurricane goni washed away 270k houses & where are the families of the dead & what are they doing? (“the quality is uneven, the plot takes wild hairpin turns, the whole is overdone, withal.”) well, yep. you gotta work w/what you’ve got, which may be de trop, or maybe not enough, too late, whatever, we'll see Scar left by landslide in Guatemala Thrusday, after hurricane Eta . . . round the bend
over the top the prez sez: “thanks 4 yr service . . . [suck-errrs] . . .” o save us big daddy for we know not what we do but big daddy's dyin’ a cancer . . . beyond the pale past the point of yet another hurricane, but the record’s been set already, already! . . . 29 named storms in atlantic, meanwhile, snowstorm in the n. great plains & prairie provinces breaks some records, then becomes t’storm (w/tornado watch) in midwest but i hate “content” — there is too much content in this historical life, too many happenings happening but when you can’t get in- surance, then you’ll know it’s all for real . . . miami looks like venice but without all the boats; & humans say what they always say about the same things, as in “there was howling wind all night, so you just hear this creepy sound” and “all these cars trying to cross intersections and just getting wrecked” or “huge amounts of water have turned the streets into rivers,” then “glacial melt water is pooling into lakes and causing devastating floods . . . then when water is needed most for irrigation later in the summer, we're seeing shortages . . .” or "i hope people will never get tired of helping us” so “knuckle down for a big clean-up” could be said most anywhere floods in congo; no rain in zimbabwe n. korea admits to storm devastation, n. korea now admids scorching heat; people carrying their bundles of stuff, climbing the hillside or walking the road, clinging to gunwales, covering bodies or yanking debris, wait in the mud by a school for a place on the floor, guatemala, honduras, chiapas, tabasco, cd be anywhere & is Monday morning commute in downtown Miami: nov. 9, 10 a.m., 69˚ f
+ the power is out. & o -- we’re under a wind advisory, too. you’d think this was california not kansas . . . hi y’day ~ 20 f > normal lo y’day ~ 25 f > normal & that’s the way it’s gone all wk is this the new normal? nuh-uh: no such thing -- just the new newer new (but fortunately, i hung our clothes out & they’re getting blow-dried naturally) now i see a u.s. map with “cold” at one end & a big arrow pointing right at us . . . baby’s it cold inside in ok city, where as of yesterday, 40k homes w/o power, 10 days after ice storm but better there than guatemala, where eta sluiced a hillside down, over dozens of homes; 100+ human beings missing presumed dead -- now the hurricane hits florida, washes cars away, closes bridges . . . warmest aug, sept, oct in california history (i.e., human, not natural); while arizona marks 15 yrs of drought, worst in 110 yrs of records; & they’re breaking nov. hi records in finland (one amongst lots of punctilious data points) & more floods everywhere, incl. deserts (e.g., libya); worst nile flooding in 100 yrs; vietnam, phillipines wrecked by typhoon + typhoon + typhoon but now? well now never you mind: a newer new american president takes the helm & all this will go go away anew but they’re drawing up the enemies lists all through the house, white red and blue alike, as tho everybody just wanted to get all the armageddin’ over with |
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |