1. Climate’s Changing Short-Shorts
i. Burning Bush Redux haiku
—Times of Israel, 16 August 2021
Police evacuate
Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital
as wildfires rage
ii. Err weep for what we have sowed.
Grim Air Quality Index
Follows wildfire smoke.
Purifiers now dusted off
Register worst color purple.
Our family oddly decides to drive
South toward Santa Cruz, tries to outrun
The wind which reaps August’s sodden plumes.
iii. George Carlin, Where Are You? haiku
Fire tornado —
Funnel whorls reaping the wind
—Rush of shit to heart.
iv. Classics Comic
GDS text: Yes, let’s count the ways
our “forward-looking” college education
(I spent more time with Douglas Bush on John Milton than any other subject — I know, low blow)
prepared us to anticipate
unprecedented flash-flooding in your Philly plus wildfires in my Northern California?
Roomie response: Hope you stay safe out there.
Elizabeth and family have decamped from near your Portola Valley
to Montecito for at least this next school year.
Phila’s deluge is bad but not terrible like in Louisiana (again).
All that said, maybe it shoulda been Dante not Milton?
v. Perfectly Natural Digital Storm Climate Changed Formula tanka
Sophisticated
Phishers’ confluence ←> circuits
Blown dementeds’ drought
—Thunderous avalanche — lightning
Fast tsunami ID theft
vi. Climate Change? tanka
Though polar icecaps
Dwindle, daily blizzard of
Ger’s poems continues.
Lately just once in a while,
There is your worthy snowflake.
2. Activist Poetpourri
i. Climates Of Change
There’s a hole in skies above
where my Divinity had been
there’s a hole in tearful heart
where more love used to live
there are holes in hiking boots
I’ve worn for forty odd years
there’re holes in swirling ozone
where Earth now grows old
if there is a soul beyond soles
hope our grandkids can do well
as your God’s rock-paper-scissors
play Roshambo with their world.
ii. Kabul After [In]Action Report Climate Change
Basking in guilt well as national embarrassment
Of abandoning Afghanis who risked it all for us
I imagine first paragraph of [Un]United States
Obituary will connect the dots from Vietnam.
Meanwhile China sits on its schadenfreude duff
While rate of depression/anxiety in Americans
Quadrupled to 44% since COVID as Ger becomes
Easy victim to charitable pleasure of nostalgia.
But even rose-colored glasses cannot keep me from
Fearing Biden’s ambitious agenda’s now toast.
iii. Humble Pie Climate Change Bake Off
Sing a Song of Sixpence,
A bag full of Rye,
Four and twenty Naughty Boys,
Baked in a Pye
—from Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, circa 1744
Now live pensive middle ground shade
‘Tween righteous or wrong.
Sometime it’s this hot quagmire horned
Thing’s audacious travesty
Riven with a cold discerning nightwood
Liminal creature cosmology
Oy us lost boys straight on ‘til mourning.
iv. Climate Change? tanka
Though polar icecaps
Dwindle, daily blizzard of
Ger’s poems continues.
Lately just once in a while,
There is your worthy snowflake.
v. One Third Of Pakistan Under Water tanka
Indus River banks
overflowing, brown parched land
can’t take up first of
what will be so many more
future seasonal monsoons?
vi. ecopoetics haiku
although requests for
such submissions is welcome
—trendline’s moved elsewhere
vii. Once-Upon-A-Time Hardcore Secular Jewish Boomer Gerry Had Such Very Great Expectations
In a letter written to a friend in 1959, Flannery O’Connor lamented that some members of the clergy,
when arguing in favor of Catholic teaching on procreation, felt the need to assuage concerns about
overpopulation. “I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can
support 40 billion,” she wrote. “I will rejoice in the day when they say: This is right, whether
we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may..”
World of hurt: yet another rotten orchard a day ‘til your Pip squeaks
Our grand/ children’s future seemed potentially bleak enough
What with already bad climate change plus democracy issues
But recently above got much worse when complicated
By Ukraine “Nazi” war and Supreme Court rulings
Which included Roe versus Wade leaks
That bring more babies onto this earth
Than can reasonably accommodate.
I am so sad about the pity of it all
As possible solutions shrink
Down to longer ‘n longer
Existential odds of
Johnny Appleseed
Survival—no less
Dickensianoid
Satisfaction
Happiness
—Perhaps
Aborted
Bliss?
Oy.
3. Most Folks Can Run But Not Hide From Global Warming
Cross-hall neighbors Arun & Prisha were proud of brilliant
Move from sometimes 120-plus degree New Delhi
With demanding quasi-mansion’s burdens
Supporting seemingly growing legions
Of such quickly aging household staff
Accompanied by all their daughters
Having just now recently fled
To upscale East Village
(Or Upper West Side
Of Manhattan)
Where man
Servants
Do not
Sleep
Near
Your
Door
Into
Milder
Environs
Closer-by
Pacific Coast
Mediterranean
Climate of condo
In so-quiet Redondo
Where are ecstatically
Alone overlooking ocean
Until reality catches up with
Them when our Homeowners
Association levies humongous
Special Assessments to refurbish
Building like Surfside dud collapse
In Florida with almost billion dollars
Liability for loss of lives, property etc
Which
Is rapidly
Succeeded
By scaffolds
That obscure
Beachfront view
As well as sunset
—Then discoveries
After walls are torn
Down of massive sea salt
Bizarre erosion of plumbing
Complete with termite infestation
Not to speak of Coastal Commission/
US Army Corps of Engineers/ municipal
Bureaucracies issuing first-time advisories
Regards tsunami evacuations warnings… Sure
Glad we sold top of market before bargain basement.
—
Prize-winning poet Gerard Sarnat is also a physician, Stanford University professor, and healthcare CEO. His literary work has been published by The Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times, as well as by many academic presses. Read more about him at gerardsarnat.com
