Day 12 — denial + heart is a muscle

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These guys have been in my poetic sights ever since I first read This Changes Everything. I regularly cite the key tenet of this poem in discussion with CC deniers.

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Heartlessland

i.
one of the most strident 
climate change deniers
is american conservative 

think tank — & i use
those words advisedly — 
the heartland institute 

by rabidly rejecting 
the scientific consensus 
on climate change it has done

perhaps more damage than
even the trillion dollar 
fossil fuel corporations

that put us here

ii.
to the surprise of no one
this organisation took the coin 
of tobacco giant philip morris

spent the 90s discrediting 
smoking’s health impacts, the risk 
of secondhand smoke & fighting smoking bans

i guess that says it all

*****

Day 12 – TI Wrote some heart poems as easy as shooting fish in a barrel 

miles & litres

supposedly my heart pumps 
almost 7 litres of blood around 

the over 60, 000 miles 
of blood vessels in my body

every. single. minute.

& i’ve driven each. & every 
one of them
                      twice. 
          looking for the slightest
   signpost
that you still love me

BONUS #1 — above average 

the average heart
beat of a woman 
is (on average) 
8 beats a minute faster 
than a man’s
— assuming it beats
at all

(i always said 
you weren’t average)

BONUS #2 — all I want for Xmas

each year more heart attacks occur
on Christmas Day than any other

Monday, likewise, has more cardiac assaults
than any other day of the week

Lookout 2028 emergency rooms
when Christmas falls on a Monday!

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