There's a hole in the bottom of the sea,
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea,
There's a hole, there's a hole,
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.
There’s a pipe in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
There’s a pipe in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
There’s a pipe, there’s a pipe,
There’s a pipe in the bottom of the sea.
There’s a spill from the pipe in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
Spilling oil from the pipe in the hole of the bottom of the sea,
There’s a spill, an oil spill,
From a hole in the bottom of the sea.
There’s oil spilling from the pipe in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
Spilling oil by the barrels by the hundreds hourly,
Killing men and fish and fowl and legacies,
All the oil, gobs of oil,
From a hole in the bottom of the sea.
There’s an oil slick that’s spreading through the sea,
Floating, sinking, drifting all throughout the sea,
It’s a mess even the astronauts can see,
All the oil, gobs of oil,
From a hole in the bottom of the sea.
There’s a lot of people working for BP,
As their fixes turn to failures steadily,
Fumbling through a circumspect apology,
They don’t know, how to slow,
Oil gushing from the bottom of the sea.
There are people cleaning oil from the sea,
Trying to mitigate unbounded tragedy,
Ask the folks up in Alaska, they’ll agree,
After years, it reappears,
Washing up from a hole in the sea.
There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea,
There’s a geyser spewing up catastrophe,
That’ll easily outlive both you and me,
And I hope we maybe learned a thing or three,
Like not to bore, a well offshore,
And put a hole in the bottom of the sea.
9 comments:
lllllllllloooll
ahhhhhhhhhhh
wonderful man
just wonderful
with the first lines i was thinking about a children song or something...
you hit it wonderfully
(and i must say i keep coming to see more of your Albums - great work)
Yup. And it's super f**ked up. Funny, in your last poem, I almost thought it was going to drift into this subject. I'm glad it didn't and you saved it for this one.
This is a great and absolutely appropriate adaptation of that old childhood favorite. I just hope this will be fixed somehow, but your poem made me think that maybe it won't be, Joaquin. What if it isn't? Dear Lord. What then?
absolutely excellent...and where in the h'l do we go from here..what a mess, what a tragedy....I pray to God we learn from this..I pray to God it can be stopped....glad you are back.....bkm
Brilliant. In a sickening, the-world's-gone-fucking-a-muck sort of way. Any innocence we had left feels utterly corrupted and fouled. Adapting this from a children's rhyme was perfect.
Again, you make this look easy.
(what happened to your book, btw? you don't have to reply, but I noticed its absence on lulu and amazon...)
Brilliant stuff!
"All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten" is my all time fav. book. All the wisdom we require was given to us when we were kids. But we chose to forgot. This is brilliant stuff, as always.
I wont say welcome back, as I was gone for over a month too. :)
u-frag - thanks! actually it is a kid song - just warped into the mess we're in now. (can't go wrong with dylan, right?)
cat - yep. and though i think bp is largely to blame, there's plenty to go around. thank you.
karen - thank you. i hope it can be too, but i don't know. even if they could cap it tomorrow, the damage done is so severe i don't know if we'll ever get our heads around it.
bkm - thank you - yes, it's scary to think how much we are willing to risk for the things we think we need.
sarah - yes, it sure has. thank you. in fairness, it is easier to parody (rip off) something, but sometimes it works. (i don't know. i sold 10. seemed like it ran its course.)
mad-mad - thanks!
aniket - thank you - vacations are good! glad you're back, though. and yes - we sure seeem to love to overcomplicate everything.
Adapting a children's song makes this poem even more powerful. I love it.
I'm probably too close to the subject to speak rationally about it. In my state, a little man with a ten foot boat is heavily regulated and permitted. Every time he turns around, Uncle Sam is up his butt. Yet BP is given an "environmental waiver" and quick, easy permit. Heavy sigh.
I also worked in environmental remediation for over a decade. Everything we did was under heavy scrutiny from the feds (even a small project in a ditch). Yet BP gets a waiver from the government. Another heavy sigh.
I don't know if the spill or the death of people could have been prevented. I do wonder about their safety and environmental contingencies. The "plan" they were allowed to use sounds bogus to me.
But I do know that it could have been contained in the initial stages. I could write a dissertation about that, too, but there's no need to. Your poem says it all! Thanks so much for posting it, Joaquin.
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