Eco-Poetry.org

TO REPAIR A BROKEN WORLD

Go forth on a mission
Riding high on a donkey back
Place smooth hands on the a dying child’s cheek
Restore the wind of his soul
Wake him now from the dead

Pluck homeless lives up from the streets
Wash their wounds with a kiss
Fill their hearts with crushed flowers
Feed them loaves of bread and fish
Give them beds where they may dream

To preserve the spirits of the earth
Petition the universe overhead
Speak in tongues toward the East
Will an end to trees’ demise
Bow before a wilderness

Rub the sea anger away
Promise to spend time remembering
The love shared
The gentle walks taken on her back

Meditate in desserts for world peace
Burn incense encased in vessels of alabaster
In Buddha temples
Chant on for years and years

As the light of the stars in a glimpse
Freely give a spark of love to a friend

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LITANY FOR CHANGE
--for Barack

Change the Pacific Ocean Trash Gyre
A swirling mass of pestilence vomiting plastic demons
Devouring the innocents of the sea

Change the melting mountains of ice

The thinning rug beneath the Polar Bear's feet
Change their early eclipse from this world

Change the wars in the Middle East
Wiping-out the children in the streets
Dressed in grey rags playing with dirt
and sticks and with pebbles

Change the insatiable hunger of the rich
For diamonds and dollar bills and oil to eat and to drink
Their self-indulging time bomb for us all

Change the extinction of the bats and the bees
The little hard working creatures
Who never asked us for anything in life
Change their downfall from this planet

Change our lust for ignorance and for more and more thing
Our hypnotic affair with guns and ammunisions
With violence on the air and violence in our dreams

Change the foolhardiness with which we treat the earth
The yanking out of forests by the acres
Without knowing the lives there
with no care for the souls there

Change our narcissism over minniscule acts of
how far we have come
Our bizarre decrees of dominion over earth and sky and sea

Change the minds and hearts of men
Their rotted country sides and blackened water ways
Their tainted winds and destempered cities

Let them be filled with color and youth and vibrant again
Let them be lucid and living and loving again

______________________________________________________

THE WORLD IS ANGRY

The world is angry
The world is very very angry
It has had it with man's ignorant tampering

Redirected rivers declare war
Forests assassinations make for plains of muddied deaths
Damns are graveyards

Belching
Thousands of factories
Belching millions of cars

Abused
The World blows
By belching blow

Oceans rear their foamy heads
Become fanged tsunamis
The oceans swallow men's cities
The oceans drag homes and crippled buildings
Where they will

The Earth shakes furiously
Shakes man off

The Planet explodes
An oven burning acres and acres

The Earth is furious
its winds shred bodies up into the atmosphere

The world is angry
The party is over

____________________________________________________________

Three eco-poems by

Nancy Mercado:To Repair a Broken World ; Litany for Change; The World Is Angry

Nancy Mercado is the author of a collection of poems titled: It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions). She is the editor of Nuyorican Women Writers Anthology (2015) published in Voices e/Magazine of the City University of New York, Hunter College's Dept. of Puerto Rican Studies. Mercado served as the editor of, if the world were mine; an anthology for children published by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), was an editor of Long Shot (1993 to 2004) and the editor-in-chief of the publication for one of those years. She also served as a contributing editor and writer for Letras Femeninas volume XXXI, No 1: The Journal of the Asociacion de Literatura Femenina Hispanica of Arizona State University. Most recently, Mercado served as guest editor of an issue of Phatitude Literary Magazine: What’s in a Nombre? Writing Latino Identity in America. She was featured on PBS Newshour in "America Remembers 911." She also appeared in PoetsUSA: Memorial to 911 with her commemorative poems. Mercado is also featured in The Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature (Facts on File) and was inducted into The Museum of American Poetics. She was profiled in Latino Leaders Magazine, Volume 7 No 6, as "one of the most celebrated members of the Puerto Rican literary movement in the Big Apple." The poetry of Nancy Mercado has been extensively anthologized. She continues to present her work throughout the USA and abroad. She serves as Assistant Editor on the Advisory Board of Eco-Poetry.org. She created the FaceBook page for the site.
Click here to view Nancy Mercado read her Eco-Poem "Litany for Change" at Poets House, April 2013.