Underwater Storm

Black gold runs through pipelines. Arteries,
Food for a bloodthirsty race.
Light us up, push us forth...
Keep us warm.
Burning away.

Dive with me.
Dive with the fire from a broken drill,
Rushing through the veins.
Cracks form as it throws me back,
And the flames begin to snarl.

The cracks, they bleed.
First a trickle, now in torrents –
A black, dead river rushing into the sea,
As the smoke chokes the reddening sunrise –
Pulling back the night.

Eyes stinging, I manage to hack out
Ragged coughs, as I stagger to the edge.
Bruised and sore hands collide
With warming metal,
As I watch the slippery, viscous cloud spread –
Hidden by arrogant officials.
They don't believe it's there.

A Gannet spots a fish shimmer... briefly,
Now obscured as the wet shadow consumes it.
A splash, as the bird dives – hungered.
It does not resurface.

Struggling weakly, a mangled thing floats away,
Splattered in a dark slime.
Trying to fly away, it fails –
Movements choked by the blanketing liquid
That spreads through the sea.

Politicians flail,
Huddled in a cool, air-conditioned room,
Calm voices discuss.
Futile ways to stop the spill,
Cheap methods to save the day
And preserve their glorified image.
As fish and sea-bound avian drift –
Encased in an oily sheen,
A lonely structure burns and bleeds...

Night falls.
Limply I slip over the edge,
Crashing into the layered sea.
Glancing up – a beacon sears the sky,
A certainty of mistakes recreated.

The dark tendrils clasp my legs,
Pulling down.
Blindfolded, lungs invaded,
It pulls me –
And I sink...

Distracted

It's a time when many
Look to distractions, and sleep;
Long-ago films flashing on a dark plastic box...

And here I sit by the window,
Head against glass.
The sun has long fallen
To distant hills, letting me be –
With nothing but a dim reflection to talk to.
Owls call faintly in the distance,
And wires are invisible to the dark landscape –
But for a wooden pole,
Standing out against the sky.

Books of science lie forgotten at my feet –
Lifts, rockets, stringed tensions...
And Newton's well-remembered laws.
Dying songbirds call to the imagination –
A story halfway told.

Yet I am so... distracted.
The trivialities of books are gone from my mind,
Instead taken by a sleeping landscape
Far away from fume-choked roads.
Discarded phones and not-quite-dead shrieks
Hide below the floor.

Trying to pass time
By suppressing fears about oncoming tests;
Music notes flicker in my mind.
Eyes itch with slight fatigue –

But I still can't sleep.