COFFMAN: Three Fracking Poems . . . & Two Mothers

[Oscar]

COFFMAN: Three Fracking Poems . . . & Two Mothers

February 5, 2012


Last (fracking) Gasp

the vultures circle

hover

impatiently gliding


while we don’t yet

know

all that’s dying


ear drums rebel

acrid portents rankle

tongue


squinting eyes leak

ozone cloaks sight

sky


heart skips beats

sinks

slow, fast, faster


like sun’s gorgeous

goodbye wave

shimmering


through

gas-laced

shroud


---Steve Coffman


= = = = =


Two Mothers



Our mother shudders

as twisted steel turns

in her belly a mile below

their churly rapine frack




Blasting holes, shooting

her up with Benzene here

Ethylene Glycol there

Aldecide left, Formaldehyde right

2-BE or not 2-BE

Not that she could care




She can shake it, she can quake it

she got moves we’ve yet to see

frack her once, frack her twice

she can take it three times more



Pump her tummy, make it churn

she’s got oil, she’s got coal

She can rock and she can roll

she’s got gas to burn

get her ripped she’s a blast

flip your head right over your ass



Not that Mama gives a moth’s hind

toenail what flame you flare or fly in

how deep you dig or why

how much you suck or where



Flammable water? Incandescent dirt?

Mama earth don’t see, don’t hear, don’t care . . .


* * *


I go to my mother’s grave

nothing but a box of bones

in the ground, her ineffable

laugh now so dim



In my noisy thoughts

I kneel on disturbed ground

eyes wet and warm, knees

wet and cold on dewy grass



I groan . . .



Dear mama mia, I care

Dear me, how much I care.


---Steve Coffman


[note: 2-BE (2-butoxyethyanol), is a glycol ether commonly used in hydrofracking that mobilizes in soil and can easily leach into groundwater.]


= = = = =


Burning The Furniture


Fracking the gas means . . . Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

“Right?”

“Damn straight!”


And burning the furniture means . . . Heat! Heat! Heat!


Oops . . . furniture gone, nowhere to sit, nowhere to sleep.



Oops, oops . . . gas gone, no more jobs, region still ruined.


---Steve Coffman
Out near the Six Corners in God’s Country, New York, USA