Papa Oil

I believe Woody Guthrie would have had a lot to say about global warming if he was alive today and the conditions of our environment. He wrote This Land Is Your Land in response to Irving Berlin's God Bless America which he felt was unrealistic and complacent. Thanks Woody for inspiring so many who came after you to raise their voices and use their art to speak out about issues where there is need for change.

Photograph: Sebastio Salgado

Was it not enough greed turned grass into a dustbowl?

Big men with diamond lies

now rape the countryside

because money means more than life.

Blue collars hammered by white

are too hungry to fight

the death plunge into black gold.

Papa oil doesn’t care about soil

or whether the sky turns

from bright blue to ash gray.

The innocent are now stuck

breathing the polluted muck

from lungs never exposed to clean air.

©Susie Clevenger 2013

Real Toads Sunday Challenge ~ Woody Guthrie