The Oil of Progress - A Poem.

The Oil of Progress.

Barreling-on, fomenting the black rivers
that metered-in an age of gold,
the planet spins against a thousand suns,
drawn upon a fragile canopy of time and space.

Horses chew-on calmly in the pasture,
made redundant generations back.
These unemployed, reluctantly drawn out
for a wedding or village affair on the green.

We struck it rich! Upwellings in unheralded Texan fields
murmured in a European war... the first to come.
The new century rolled its eyes aloud
at Quantum Physics and tanks,
which generally broke down,
or sank in soiled mud around feet forever bound.

Depression came, blowing grains to swirl
dry and unsown in the dust bowls of wrath;
the razor-shards of oil plundered the land,
ploughing into the furrows of a second, greater war.

Reparations and expansion; populations grew.
Thirteen billion hands (working in pairs you understand)
of oil-fed fingers now abstract their attentions,
in blind faith, this cornucopia could never end,
each squeezing the Earth like a hollow stone.

Loosing the old ways and stuffy values...
now oil-fed bombs fall on the swollen lands
of its source; doodling about the jigsaw-map
and shading-in the missing pieces, state by state;
tweaking the beard of an older faith.

Buckling-up the belt of quirky geology around the Earth,
to secure the ring of fire into more democratic hands;
lacing Nature's midriff tighter and tighter,
until the final phantom sputters
a farewell flame and is blown-out,
like the last smoking candle on a birthday cake.

Give them a lump of sugar from your hand,
and a hearty slap on the flank - entice them, with whispers.
Call the horses back again, sooner, not later.
The oil-party clock struck twelve, while our backs were turned.

by Chris Rhodes.

Author's Comments:
"The world is running out of the cheap oil that has fuelled the modern age. Times are going to change. It's called "Peak Oil"."