Fake Empath Poem by Mark Heathcote

You're a fake empath
With no deeper understanding than eels in the grass
Leaving one home for another
Soon, the factories will breathe their last sigh.
And we'll all wonder why - why - why we didn't act sooner.
Why didn't we - we surrender fossil fuels earlier?
Why we didn't turn to wind power before
Why we didn't invent solar panels quicker
And avoid this shared disaster, this calamity.

Beasts of burden have carried their loads far too long
They envy eels, snakes in the grass
But not you, me or this one, to sum it up
Those bankers, devils, demons on their arse
Betting on black takes the house
Our uncertainty now is palpable,
tears are running indelibly faster, deeper and darker
We're all on the edge of a precipice,
the eve of some shared common catastrophe.

Hearts are beating sardonically slower, heavier-
Filled with endless needless regret
Dismayed the seas; are poisoned
Oxygen levels have fallen below what they should be
Evangelists sing, sing, sing like the waves of the sea
As Death, Death washes over me, eyes bulging red
Lungs choking, what can it be?
It greets us like the tailing-off bottom of a kite tail
Oh, at the curtains close, let's show remorse.

Take a bow and show some shame
It was never all about you
The guilt was all yours anyhow, anyway
Repentance might be for slivering electric eels
Homeless on their last golden mile
But I curse their cup was ever full
That it ever touched my lips
That it turned any or all
These innocent creatures into pyres of ash and dust?