Black and White Poetics

Black and White Poetics - Episode 11

Dialogue

DANIEL:
Back in the good old days
When the boys would play games
With their toys in the hay
With great poise in their gait
The weather was a very balanced affair
Sometimes the sun pierced its fiery red rays through the air
But at a level quite the same
It was known for ice and rain
And everything else
That would describe
The opposite of mid-July
As the years drew on
That’s when it started going wrong
By the time we hit the aughts
Most our days were mighty hot
Now it’s gotten even worse
Come to mark it, it’s perverse
But we still can’t see the curse
That consumes what’s in our purse
So how are we
Supposed to see
The consequences
Of our greed?

SAMIR:
Roll them dice
And roll them nice
And show them right
From wrong
Just like the song
That bonds the night
With all the light
That clogs our sight
And if you roll a six
Typically
That’s a one in six
Usually
But the rules, you see
Have sorta bended quite confusingly
Cause it’s now a one in three
That four and two is what you’ll see
Never mind the math
It ain’t got no rhyme

DANIEL:
It would be nice
If all the ice
Could stick around
Alas - it won’t

SAMIR:
With data stretching back to the 1880s
Any old jack can say he’s gleaned the way these
Ice cold summers in the arctic
Have lost their spark quick
The frost once measured with a yardstick
Is now no more

DANIEL:
Well if you peep the figures from the satellite
You’ll start to see
The Arctic Sea
Is losing ice
At a rather stark degree
It’s hard to be
An optimist
When the world’s in such a twist
But if you maintain your brain
You’ll find the rain ain’t such a pain

SAMIR:
Could it be
That those who hold the PhDs
Are not as free
In their methodology
As they often ought to be?
For it’s probably got to mean
A little something
That the numbers they’ve been pumping
Do not show
Everything there is to know
About the world

DANIEL:
“I am the walrus!” screamed the outspoken critic of our
Overall civics
With specific
Metaphysical misgivings
Cost of living
Isn’t dipping
Yet we still can’t earn a shilling
Despite being more than willing
To engage in acts of killing
No, not literally killing
But in a roundabout way
Yes
Poor little polar bear

SAMIR:
Ice, like the sweetest of fruit
Weaves its way through all the seasons
Without much in terms of reason
Each appearance ends in treason
For the freezing
Doesn’t last for very long
And it’s all so very wrong
How we’ve gotten ourselves
On such thin, thin ice
Which is something we can handle fairly well
Still it really isn’t nice
How we did them polar bears
I know they’re scared
Which is fair
‘Cause they soon won’t have nowhere
To rest their hair
When we’re through with this affair

DANIEL:
And so we offer, with prostration
And undying adoration
The combined accumulation
Of our glacial population
Take it as a great oblation
Take it, or take a vacation
For the ice shan’t be so patient
After all this sublimation

SAMIR:
I don’t want to be the one
To burst the fun
And curse the sun
But, though it hurts, it must be done
We got glaciers on the run
And it doesn’t really seem
Like we’re on track
To get them back
For it’s been the case that none
Of our attempts to see this situation spun
Into a perk
Have ever worked

DANIEL:
See that map?
Well, those blue dots
Are brand new spots
Where we’ve seen an
Uptick
In glaciers
Such thick
Formations
May perplex the situation
But the glacier, by its nature
Pays no mind to all this danger
It just looks for a nice, cool spot
Nothing freezing, nothing wild
Something mild
Where it can blossom like a cherry tree
And - whoop - it’s there, you see?

SAMIR:
Well I’m here to diffuse
What’s got you all so confused:
Just because there’s ice
Don’t mean things are back to nice

DANIEL:
The great ice sheet of not-so-Greenland
And the continent that none of us have ever seen
Save for army men and science guys
Well - they’re slowly dying guys
Unless we strike a balance
Between freezin’ rain and fryin’ skies