This is called "Water Crisis".
I was in Indonesia last year for a conference
on plastic pollution in the oceans, a conference mostly
for scientists, but they invited poets.
They also invited visual artists,
and they invited musicians.
Indonesia surrounded by also a gyre of plastic pollution
on all of the edges of the country of the islands
there is this plastic.
At the time I was there there were a lot of things happening,
including that the water was cut off in Mexico City.
Some of you may remember that.
"Water Crisis".
They have cut off the water in the sinking metropolis.
Do not wash clothes.
Bathe only with small buckets.
Meanwhile, cisterns on the roofs of the rich
send it singing through the pipes of the better houses.
There is the sound of applause.
It is the clap of wings just before doves enter
the darkness of the dove coat.
Then a quiet comes, the sirens die down.
Security gates slams shut.
It is like night.
We are waiting to breathe again.
The gamecocks are forced to fight with knives
taped to their feet.
This is illegal, so is everything else.
And there is never enough.
The logs are fed little by little
into the mouths of the clay ovens.
Many songbirds have been roasted by the heavens.
Motor scooters flock through the streets, a murmuration crossing
like starlings the skies.
It is a matter of thirst.
They transport the cocks in baskets
covered by plastic bags, their entire lives
tethered to the ground trapped in wicker
until they are angry enough.
Roof to roof in the conclaves, cistern to cold cistern,
they have seen to it.
The rich will have what they want.
Is this a relief?
The last cloud is empty, the first death reason enough.