I have a dream

I have a dream
That I will swim with coloured coral
For I dived into the cool embrace of the brilliance of the largest arms of nature,
But the Great Barrier Reef was sickly pale, it’s fever forever worsening as we feed it’s temperature.
The absence of pigment
Was equivalent to the absence of dollars in a bankers wallet.
Once back on the boat, my Mum wiped her wet hair from her face to look at me.
“I wish you could have seen the coral like I have seen,”
she said
I nodded, me too.
I feared my dream would never come true,
So I joined the crusade to rescue
Our planet
I wrote a sign to make my thoughts loud enough for people to remember, shouted words and punched my fists.
But still my voice was too quiet over the noise of a booming economy.
I had a dream.

I have a dream,
To finish my schooling, and to travel the world.
I was going to wait.
But now time is ticking down,
The hourglass has been flipped, and it’s counting down the seconds till our demise,
Sand is falling, and for every grain that falls…
An ice-cap melts
A tree collapses
A fire breaks out,
And in the flames I see the faces of my grandchildren.
Asking me why, why our generation never did something.
I flew on a metal bird to Paris, one magical Christmas,
My sister wrote a note, enclosed with the yearnings of an innocent child,
She sent her wish to the heavens and it weighs heavy on my hollow, helpless heart that I couldn’t make it come true.
She wished for it to snow on Christmas Day,
But not even Santa Claus could summon snow that year.
It’s a torturous thing, watching your wishes drown under mother nature’s angry tide
Because we are too selfish to abide, when will this ignorance subside?
I had a dream.

I have a dream,
That one day my children can still live the farmer lifestyle that my ancestors lead for generations,
I pray that the soil
We toil over
Will not go to waste under grey building blocks,
I hope that the seeds we planted,
You will not take for granted when you eat your next meal,
Too hard to swallow?
I cry, hoping the tears I create will sink into the ground to feed one more animal,
One more,
Because these creatures are my home,
My family,
The fuel for my future,
I have a dream that the growing food bowl won’t shrink the size of our food.
Will this path lead us down to our grassy green grave?
I had a dream

I have a dream.
To leave this wasteland now labelled home.
I dream to see Amsterdam, Miami, Rio de Janeiro and London.
They are all long gone now except for the weary faces of people from cities submerged underwater.
Bodies on top of each other, echoes of the life we once led.
I dream of eating wholesome food grown from roots bellow.
Artificial machinery leaves us with our only food source.
Our roots have been cut off, I may never bear children, never start a family.
I dream of working as an astronaut; this world's too destroyed to discover.
No one’s’ working on a dying planet.
those deluded politicians, the journalists in denial from decades ago
Too focused on today to care about tomorrow
Their actions, their words
Are my consequences
I had a dream.

We have a dream
To live in a world where the facts of our childhood won’t become the fantasies of our children’s future
The side quest humanity is taking is too long to outlast our devastation
How are we too survive when everything else is dying?
How long will it take for us to wrap our minds around the fact that there is a solution,
Like a math equation, the degradation of a civilization lies in the palms of a world full of miscommunication

We had a dream.

This poem was created and performed by students as part of OutLoud Eco!Slam 2019.