Climate Week event “What on Earth is Up with the Weather?”
Monday 3rd March 2014
Matt Harvey – crowdsourced poem ‘Drains’
Gurgling and sluicing, diverting and engaging
Foaming and spuming, splashing and dribbling
The quick waters are taken by the quiet drain
Drain’s torrent roaring
Gurgling, burbling down into the centre of the earth
Drains – Network of pipes, which flow to who knows where – but do we care?
We should!
Drains, underground, unseen, essential, unnoticed unless blocked.
As a drain, not for the first time, I can no longer cope
I drink rain but do not allow it to be taken away. Instead I hold it and it
overflows.
Rain on the drain is strain on the brain
A month opening splitting it’s innards is the repellent drain
Glittering gurgling vortex, beaching detritus as the whorls ebb
Drains, pains, when blocked by rains
Will the chemical mix of old paint tins and shits melt the metal of the griddle of
the drain in the rain.
You’re my main drain – so please please drain
Alert! Danger! The drain can take no more of the incessant rain. Neighbours
beware!
DRAINS SHOULD BE DUG DEEPER!
My neighbor concreted her front garden to park her car, now I keep a pair of
willies in my porch
Drains are there to take away water, so why I water rising through them?
The blocked drains; we can moan and groan but the fault is our own
Open mouths, sated by the heavens, our salvation?
A place where mess and birds nests collect
Blocked drains cause floods, which bind communities together
Ribbons of gushing, rushing flows
Inky, infiltrating, insidiously invading iron or metal!!
Unclean, wastefull, torrent, messy, gulley, vortex,
The drains gurgle like a baby after it’s had its milk.
Busy, hungry, tired drains
Glug, glug, glug and now its beginning to stink
Greed’s emetic tunnels.
Disappearing deep down to the bowels (or kidneys?) of the earth.
Clogged arteries
Drains do not discriminate. From muddy run off to chip fat.
Down the drain now more we find: Out of sight and out of mind
Twenty meters higher than usual the aquifers overspill, filling the village with
what usually stays below
Drains erupt upwards regurgitating slurry…
Sewage fountain shooting manhole cover skywards
On the terrace, pegging out a shirt, pondering a gargoyle drain or high level
divert.
Gurgling, bubbling, too much water, overflowing, spilling over
Drains are thought to solve the problem
Mysterious brown objects floating around
Swallowing sewage and spewing it out again
Bubbling up, smelling of dirty washing machine
Drains are very smelly, I wishes we had to write about willies.
Never-mind the rain in Spain landing on the plane Let’s talk Somerset, plain,
insane no room down the drain
Drains, dysfunctional, disapprove beneath the deluge.
There are no drains in the drive that’s washed away by the flood, to 3 feet deep
mud
One should remembers when it rains and rains, the vital need to clear the drains
Keep it clean – Spare the rod and spoil the drain
Stinking drains full of dog hair and soap suds!
EVEN THE RATS HAVE MOVD TO A BETTER CLASS OF DRAIN
Why are we still talking drains when we should be thinking levies.
The drains’s story…the ring of a 47 year marriage….the cigarettes if countless
idles minutes…the sweet wrappers…..echo
How many keys re-discovered in here?
Willows dream by storm drains of the next surging stream
Our brain drain has made drains irrelevant
All you need is an effing spade
THE DRAINS IN RAIN WILL FLOOD AGAIN (Not in Spain)
Drains work hard, they need a holiday, I think.
It ought to take the water which instead flowed onto the rod
Currents are draining, from rivers of raining (Sandbags would have been easier)
Drains need to be enormously large or else!
Drains are necessary.
Drains sustain the balance of life
Drains are a fundamental of land management
Drains: Water way to go!
This poem was created from phrases provided by the 200-strong audience at the
launch of CLS in Dorset Climate Week 2013 activities.