Poem for the Anti Fracking Campaign

Beware the one who talks to you of your children’s future

for he carries an Earthquake machine

that will rubble the lives of your children.

Beware the one who talks to you of Investment and Community Projects

for he will bribe the weak and the craven among you

and invest in division and hatred.

Beware the one who talks to you of protecting the environment

and of safety procedures. She is getting millions

to lie and will protect herself

from every consequence

with an army of lawyers.

Most of all, beware the one who talks to you of jobs.

He is searching for loot and, after he gets it,

will leave you all to drown in a hole

you might never get out of.

I’ll tell you how I know this:

Years ago a Jobsman came to my old town

spitting hundreds of jobs at us.

He opened mines and factories,

looting the earth and the people.

Even greater loot came to the Jobsman

by way of the politicians

who made sure that, just like them,

he didn’t have to worry about taxes

or for paying any rent for the factories and mines,

which, by rights, belonged to the people.

Of course, the people did not (and yet do not)

even belong to themselves. The Jobsman paid the people

just enough so that they

would unproblematically belong to him

for the little while he needed them for loot-extraction.

To cut a long, sad story short:

a few years passed and then, of course, the Jobsman fucked off

with all the loot, and all the jobs.

All he left was a great big hole,

a great big magnetic hole in the side of my town.

This hole has had many different names

for all of the different people

who have fallen into it over the years.

For most it’s called The Unemployment Hole.

For many, it’s been Addiction Hole.

For other’s, Black Depression Hole.

So many have fallen and fall and are falling

into The Suicide Hole.

Over the years I have heard many women screaming

unanswered in Wife-Beating Hole.

This great big hole in the side of my old town, gouged out

in one swoop by the Jobsman: I call it Memory Hole.

I call it Memory Hole

because thirty years on

people are still falling into the hole

and very few remember

and even fewer will ever admit

who it was that dug the hole.

So, my advice to you-

from someone who knows-

is this: when the Jobsman comes,

gather your strength,

gather your greatest numbers around,

march as one in his direction

and run the lying cheating bastard

out of town.