We're now deep into the sixth extinction and the pain of this has accelerated.

My second collection of writings and scribbles - The Last Chameleon - respond to this visceral sense of an ending, and the urgent need for us to create safe havens and sanctuaries for all the not-human-life that is still with us, hiding and trying desperately to hold on.

These two Ecocide poems were published by Suffolk Poetry Society and Art Branches CIC in 2024.

 

LOST MADAGASCAN SOLITUDE

Sloping crystalline falling away skies

nudge a luxuriant forested isle - wide-eyed tree-skipping lemur-strewn -

obediently it slides eastward, ever further distant from anchoring shores.

 

A boat-less earth.

Hunched up blood-licking apes locked into fruit-held rift valleys. 

Sharpening their flints. 

 

The sautéing sifaka, jitters, nervy, princely pirouettes. 

Esoteric treasure trove, trust-bound, 

assembled exotica anciently unfolds. 

 

In solitude, a jolly party contained together in pacific balance:

reptilian bug-eyed chameleons sure and slow-footed, 

shy slinking Fossa, a lone long-fingered aye-aye absentmindedly 

tapping out dangerous omens in primeval morse code.

 

Waves crash, anguished howls -

one rogue boatful with hungry bellies and hatchets. 

Chameleons adjust multi-coloured jackets 

- to hide away fast. 

 

The island’s grizzled chains slip their moorings

grind down Noah’s Ark of charms. 

Axes sear, slice, ricochet

Malagasy’s pristine wonders slump - wounded, bloodied, defiled.

 

The world’s fourth largest isle, 

once tree carpeted now down to rubbed raw floor boards.