Good evening, everybody. This is Stephen Lynn Nicholson here in Jackson, Michigan, of course, as always, support prisonradio.org. Support Prisoner Creative Arts Project out of University of Michigan; great, great, great endeavors they do to help people like us incarcerated who have no voice. So, thank you. This is a beginning of a series of poems I’m going to do because it’s very long. I wrote this for a national syndicate. It was all about water, and they give us multiple points. So, every single one of these is going to start with a point about water, and then I’m going to go into a poem. So, we’ll just do this in installments. So, look for the next ones. Thank you.
Water
First key point: Uranium mining from the 1990s has caused cancer-causing water supplies in the Navajo Nation. The company Dig Deep is trying to fix this problem for the Navajo Nation. It is expensive to build pipelines across the Southwest area of the United States. It is estimated it would cost more than 200 million dollars to build these pipelines.
Supplies they die worldwide.
Life-giving water never dies.
The Gulf and the Mississippi River collide
Yet never coincide.
Powers divide.
Power provides.
Choose your side of the line.
Uranium mines in the U.S.
Cape Town sun shines,
But people are still dying like they sipping brine.
An aquifer that provides parasites more than electrolytes. Navajo supplies of life are now ending life
Because they can’t get a pipeline.
What cancer?
Too bad we’re not comprised like a mechanical device.
You know they’d get an oil pipeline.
Our psyche must be contrite and dig deep,
Like dig deep,
Trying to raise these dollar signs.
Since 1909 and zero,
There’s been no hope for the Navajo.
They need a hero.
It’s time.
Next key point: one gallon of water is what it takes to make one almond. I call them blood almonds.
Californians yawning
Despite fires flaunting the power of God.
We just want some more almonds.
I was a Raisin Nut Bran man, and now I’m mad
that I got to eat only two scoops of Raisin Bran.
The plan is — what plan?
Water is not so common when your plans are dissolving
at the drop of a butt from a Marlboro.
Great things often go up in flames,
Like Tutankhamun,
When your support flounders
And your problem’s not their problem,
But becomes our entire problem.
Southern Cali athletes
Like stallions drink gallons and gallons of water
For accomplishing stardom,
But our almonds!
We ain’t starving,
But we ain’t got shaved almonds
On our sodas from the fountain.
So, make a wish in a fountain of water
And dismiss the fires that exist.
The kids dismissed
As death rose up on his boat with a kiss.
Ask for problem solving
Regarding some stinking almonds
And ignore life’s traumas,
While I will not squander my power to proclaim
And expect manifest blessings from Heavenly Father.
He don’t need a gallon of water to grow an almond.
Give him an eyedropper to water the mustard seed
And see the growth accomplished and not falter.
His return on investment is smarter than Silicon Valley fathers, World production harder without father,
While he substantiates substance of us sisters and brothers, While exerting nothing to provide energy
Like that withdrawn from an almond.
His endless source of water takes no gallons
To make his almonds.
That’s the first installment of water. Thank you.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
