Young Writer Competition

”This earth that we love and cherish,
We shall now watch perish,

We were warned of what was to come,
Still, look at what we have done.

We have cut down mother nature's trees,
But we still say, “this does not concern me”,

We are polluting our fresh airs,
Yet all we hear about is Cardi B’s new love affair,

We have watched our forests burn,
we still must learn;

That our actions have consequences,
Other must suffer at our expenses,

Animals fearing death and extinction,
Trump calls it fake news and fiction,

Countries like Kenya suffering from drought,
Yet all we hear in the news is “Djokovic locked out”,

We have polluted our oceans
Young teens fighting with devotion,

From ocean depths to mountain peaks,
Yet still no one speaks,

Those intuitions we must act on,
Cause we won’t realise what we got until it’s gone,

We can’t turn the hands of time back,
But we can still act,

Our earth suffers in silence,
People still refuse the science;

Some people call climate change defiance,
“We can kill cause we have a license”.

Our world, our planet, our earth,
But we still do not truly value it’s worth;

Soon the earth we know will no longer exist,
We still have time, we must persist.

Martha GroganThe realisation

”I was a girl when I discovered waste goes in a big hole in the ground.

Is that true?

What happens when they run out of room?

Does it do bad things to the dirt? It seems so.

Is that really the best solution anyone could come up with? Lord save us.

Disbelief. Incredulity. I found myself teetering on the edge of laughter. Ringlets bouncing up and down. They know how to split the atom now; They’re in their labs cooking up CRISPR, learning how to umake the blind and change the colour of people’s lives. Men build rocket ships; even a robot can restart a heart.

The debris is all shoved into a hole in the ground.

Damp, down pressing still now, pressing tight, pressing, crushing and close enough to bite. Smell sting burn wince. Rinse and repeat. I can’t move.

I can’t stomach the thought of cracking open a chipped eye. Glass. They’ll be the last of me to go. I Feel like one of those hapless dogs; tiny creatures with their robotic paws and matted, pleading jammy eyes, I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know how long I’ll continue to be here.

I used to think she’d come for me. Her big shining eyes, chubby fingers, giggle and squeal. Dress me up, twirl me round and set the table for me.

I once was a princess.

Summer-soaked picnics were the best of all. She’d put me in my best dress, comb my hair and set me across the blanket from him. Fluffy skin, a gaze beady and black and fresh coals. Sparkling floral China, tea and cake laid out for us; That word always made me feel special. Us.

That sting of rejection? Refused a job, two-timed and betrayed? Losing your first friend. Losing the only person in the world whoever cared enough to give you a name. I don’t even remember it anymore. But I’ll never forget her face

I know lots of words- It’s been a while since I’ve had need to use them. But I know with great certainty that if I ever looked, there’d never be a description close enough to even eclipse the feeling. I thought she’d rest me on her pillow forever. Gentle guardian angel. Favourite.

Dolly.

The future is fast coming for the realm of the living. It slaps and stings and simmers shamelessly. I was demoted from bed to shelf, to wardrobe, to a dark rubber that burned my skin. Now I’m a part of The Heap.

And yet I will not and cannot die. I am discarded doll parts, paper hair and yellowed Styrofoam teeth. My skin is fermented food, fungus, and failure. I shut the remains of my mouth tighter.

Seal it. Save it.

If I could open my eyes against the sludge and trudge and ever-spreading wave of luckless rot, I’m sure nothing would ever care to meet them.

The hole in the ground grows with every passing day. It’s an unnatural beast, heaving and huffing and stretching its fingers past beyond where it should ever dare go. It’s a cruel and tyrannous creature; made of things like me. I tell myself that I'm better.

I’m not.

When will it softly cease to grow? When will they stop fuelling the flame?

Ciara Summer

”This is the end
The early golden skies full of hope,
Enriched with silence of a fresh beginning,
Is now a veil of velvet darkness
Cascading a white fluorescent fog,
that shatters the promise of a new day.
Brambles lurk twisted and torn over the ground

Our dark emerald spines wrapping around the sickening structures you once called home,
Destroying, distorting as you did to our home,
Our rich twisted talons claw at your precious monuments,
Claiming everything that rightfully belongs to us
Festering our way fiercely to our earths fiery core
Soon everything shall be what it once was,
What it should be,
Without you.

Mary LalorThe trees