Having lived millions of years 

In the bowel of the Earth 

With occasional forays to the surface

You lent yourself to be used as mortar 

And sometimes tar

Sometimes you trapped folks in pits as in Sodom and Gomorrah

But finally, some clever folks penetrated your store houses

Of coal, oil, and gas

Donated by matter dead many times over

Today you groan, gripped in death throes

And as you trigger this dirge

We peep at the atrocious paths 

Clawed by humans to make you spurt

Capital that tore humanoids apart

Your lines cut through forests, sand dunes and creeks

Claws sunk kilometres deep into oceans

Exploding sound bombs to reverberate off the bellies and backs of whales

Sounding boards with muffled wails

And friendly seismic data yielding deadly bombs 

Nothing, nothing was sacred to you except cash

You cared less when the feet of babes ceased to patter

And your feet turned the Earth into a canvass of craters

Disembowelled, the Earth yielded your secrets

And petrodollars and military shields emboldened your bloody insolence 

Today we recall when humans ran amok

Disposed of steam

Soon lost steam

And hoisted internal combustion dragons

Dispensed with solidarity

Took on individuality

Took on insularity  

Lost all sense of pluriverses and got stuck in monoculture and universities

You were hailed as the harbinger of progress

You knew you were the purveyor of death and destruction

Mine pits, oil wells, flow stations, and gas flares

Infernal stuff than the world ever saw

Yet you thrived undeterred and well defended by deniers

Deflecting truth and roasting the Earth

Today who would remember that you were born around 1900?

A mere infant in the measure of time

You present yourself as the inevitable lord of the planet

Definer of life 

Powered by exploitation, subjugation, dispossession, slavery, colonialism

Imperialism and putrid capitalism

But here you lie on your death bed

Beloved of speculators, tycoons, and riders on the horses of greed

You lie, surrounded by liars unable to believe that you could go

The way of all civilizations that negate the wellbeing of Mother Earth

But here you lie, limp, entangled by your bloated transnational entrails

Today your bedchambers burst in flames powered by wandering methane

Your entrails blackened by soot, like the nostrils of infants you choked

The canaries fall silent, benumbed by your evil

Your gas furnaces still echo the hellish dreams of Dante

And we marvel on how you attained this infamous gory depth in the slice of time you held humans captive

The diseases you spurned in sacrifice zones remain stuff of legend

The lives you truncated recall your evil reign in a billion tombstones 

Your fossil priesthood reinforced your cultic grip

Climate denial the unyielding creed

Net Zero heroes – all traders in hot air

Indirect capturers, rock cavern privatised prisons in the belly of the Earth

Today each belch marches your toxic farts

Tectonic convulsions expose 

Carbon slavers, sequesters and COALonisers that 

Kept humans blind as they trudged to the precipice

Risking a plunge into oblivion

Placing a bet on the lie that your false coded farts had bases in Nature

Today as you take your last breadth

We blow the horn and announce the passing of the lord of capital

As humans wake up from slumber and stand together, labour together

Sing together and dance together

As your life support is pulled off by solidarity

Of the children of Mother Earth 

Ready to blow your dust into the storm

We behold the rainbow heralding a calm

As we prepare to ensure that your dust never regroups

And regain our mind and recall when we were intertwined

In the community of beings

19 December 2021