Youth strike

I stand with the young, striking students

and pupils calling time on Climate Chaos.

There is plenty of Welsh weather today 

cold and wet. We shuffle and drip in Castle Square.

There’s Socialist Workers, bandwagon barnacles

with their rent-a-mob bullhorn, placards and newspapers 

who've suddenly had a green Damascene moment

or maybe just found a fresh bunch of impressionables.

There’s two primary girls in unicorn hats

holding their paint posters, neatly wrapped

against rain. Animals are their friends 

and they don’t eat their friends. So we march...

CLIMATE EMERGENCY! 

The Extinction Rebellion woman shouts in every shop door

confusing the Asian men looking out from their global food stores,

angrily waving her soggy cardboard at crawling cars.

...to the Guildhall for more speeches and slam rants,

chants of ‘Friday is the Future’

‘Keep the Oil in the Soil, Keep the Coal in the hole’

(They need to work on that one!)

As the committed head to the storm

beaten beach to pick litter

the comrades slip off for a pint

I want to shout

Dear ignorant darlings,

don’t get recruited by their agenda.

You’re not just foot soldiers in their perpetual class war.

Please don’t get compromised, like we all did before.

But this is not my gig, so I return to my quite 

small economical car, the road’s roar, the

pouring traffic, the misting screen, the world

rushing by to its million oblivious lives.

© Phil Coleman

Youth 4 Climate march sees hundreds of children skip school

Phil lives near Swansea and tries to balance work and the need to write. At the age of 50 he's still a complete tyro at everything except juggling words.

England in 2019

Dark shore hide little boat sinking.

Pray cursing shaved heads find us

or we drown. Dawn a pebble beach,

foil blankets to camera. Blue nitrile hands

slide the white side door. Just eight inside

this van. Too brown for chalk cliff land

but England is safe. How many make a crisis?

In Kentish fields one hundred trucks rehearse

six thousand stuck grid-locked loads

of cold store grub, palleted floor to ceiling.

Cue media battles, ministerial briefings.

Hospitals stocking meds and fridges

less Europeans, sabre rattled, quitting

but Boris blowhards still burning, not building, bridges.

© Phil Coleman

Eight men detained after crossing Channel in inflatable dinghy

No-deal Brexit rehearsal in Kent 'a waste of time'

Phil Coleman lives near Swansea and tries to balance work and the need to write. At the age of 50 he's still a complete tyro at everything except juggling words.

Ted

died in a corner by the toilet
at the coffee shop where he’d lived
and slept for the last ten years

I read, between tears

he had worked all his life
but at low-paying working class jobs

managed to survive
on a limited government pension

an unexpected expense
left him suddenly scrambling

the restaurant his refuge
as his body battled cancer

Nothing sudden, like a heart attack

never touched drugs
not a big drinker

Nothing brutal, like mugging

kind and easy going

Slumped at his table for hours
folks just drinking their coffee
coming and going

nobody ... noticing
this person’s dying breath

like that photo:

a toddler on the slabs
his endless, shrunken stare
lying between so many ghetto feet

But this is Vancouver
not Warsaw

Weep

© Phil Coleman

Death of Canadian man living in 24-hour coffee shop sparks housing outcry

Phil Coleman lives near Swansea and tries to balance work and the need to write. At the age of 50 he's still a complete tyro at everything except juggling words.

Seismic Sunday

Earthquake in South Wales!

Earthquake in South Wales, social networking reported,

'Don't contact us' begged the authorities,

'Unless you have something to report,

Nobody's hurt so chill out;

It's the weekend after all

So nobody's in the office,

Order another of what you fancy

Before you were rudely interrupted'.

Earthquake in South Wales, just a few plaster cracks

According to the early news,

No need to reach for insurance policies,

Pointless to evacuate;

'I felt it up here' posted Billy from Liverpool,

Yeah OK right,

I felt nothing in Aberystwyth

But I'd had a few you know.

© David Subacchi

Earthquake felt across much of England and Wales

David Subacchi lives in Wales (UK) where he was born of Italian roots. He studied at the University of Liverpool and has 4 published collections of his English Language poetry: First Cut (2012), Hiding in Shadows (2014), Not Really a Stranger (2016) and A Terrible Beauty (2016) as well as a collection in Welsh: Eglwys Yng Nghremona (2016).

Earth wave

Sat on a bench the first warm day of the year

Teens cuddle a phone mangling songs

A car parked, windows right down

the Swan's game fast and loud on the radio

two men talk diesel and body work

A couple, he's always borrowing

never paying, she's always late, only saying

A girl whining pleasepleaseplease!

immense weight like a small town

being dragged deep under the ground

shuddering up through my soles, my seat

closer, louder, deeper

like next door's crashing through all around

but I'm out in the park, there's not even a wall

some forgotten old thing turns right under our feet

reminding us all of its uneasy sleep

then just in a moment, the earth snaps back

all quiet and still

but the waitress in the café doorway still chanting I'm too young to die

dragged by the scruff from our long dream of safety

everyone asking What was that?

Later the stories of

rattling doors and shaking floors

dancing pipes, jiggling panes

glasses dancing, cups in saucers, forks on tables

and stock scrambling off shelves in the convenience store

© Phil Coleman

Earthquake felt across much of England and Wales

Phil Coleman lives near Swansea and tries to balance work and the need to write. At the age of 50 he's still a complete tyro at everything except juggling words.

Storm Fruit

Today, the radio says we've killed one third of insects,

but we'd hardly guessed the total

before we really started burning the trees.

Behind copper clouds of Saharan sands

the sun is red with Portugal's wild fire.

It's rained fruit in the street.

I pick up a Disney red apple and a Tango'd satsuma.

Is this our next plague: falling fruit

so cheap that once dropped it's rubbish,

trashed because it's touched tarmac,

not even soiled with some dirty earth?

Maybe it's a joke?

Someone's injected laxative, or drugs, or mercury

and they're nearby, sniggering,

filming, itching to share my greed or stupidity.

Dare I eat?

But perfect as they look,

(and why wouldn’t bait look this good?)

they're reassuringly tasteless.

No hint of pesticide residue, rainforest slash-and-burn,

or stolen village stream

that is the global brand of mass food production.

So bland and sweet only to the eye!

Three plagues already this Tuesday.

Then from the west the hurricane howls.

Each year it's the storm of the century.

Waves taller than churches no longer shock.

No bigger brag than your online boast:

yeah, I was there, at the end of the world.

© Phil Coleman

A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It's a catastrophe.

Phil Coleman lives near Swansea and tries to balance work and the need to write. At the age of 50 he's still a complete tyro at everything except juggling words.