Two Global Crises | Poem

I wrote this poem in response to Ken Robinson's book, The Element. I wanted to portray the way he describes our natural resource crisis but also the new crisis which he highlights to do with our human resources. While reading his book, it becomes clear that what he is trying to show how we should all help to get everyone working at their potential and using the skills and talents that they have so that we can utilise our population as effectively as possible. I think this would also help to stem our first global crisis to do with our natural resources.



The first global crisis:

A global crisis of natural resources
An inevitable circumstance
Of using more than you have
Abusing what we take for granted

The animals and plants
Can't fend for themselves
They've been victim to our worsening ways
For longer than they dare remember

A planet left in tatters
All the best bits are finding it hard
And all the bad bits are taking a hold
They'll take and take and take

We've ended up with a problem
Of nothing left to take
We didn't do our fair share of giving
And a price is paid in a planet's survival

The second global crisis:

It's a brand new global crisis
One created by the humans
Against ourselves
A global crisis of human resources

Expectation builds the walls
Inside our minds where the ideas grow
So the ideas can’t flourish
Left to mould in their cell

Creative minds constrained
Then trained to believe the lies
Academia rules
Invention is doomed

But no one is stopping to think
That the best ideas in our planet
Were the creations of the oddballs
The weirdos, the ones that didn’t fit in

These people are the ones
Who didn’t let the walls in their minds
Hold still, they broke them down
And found the next best thing for our planet

I hope we soon learn our lessons
Take heed of this history
Thinking outside the box is the only way
We will save human kind’s story

02.10.16

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash