The World Does Not Need Another ESG Report
A Poetic Exploration on the Bullsh*t of Sustainability Reporting.
I wrote this poem coming from a place of both deep love and frustration.
With a love for life. And a frustration for the wasted potential of so many beautiful souls. Of their untapped love. And their repressed aliveness.
This is an expression of a deep pain I feel for the world. And for the human beings occupying themselves with writing ESG reports, CSRD disclosures, GRI frameworks, carbon accounting spreadsheets and the endless machinery of measurement.
I might step on some toes. I might step on your toes.
If you feel hurt, I gently ask you to look deeply into the pain. I'm not here to judge. I'm here to reflect.
May the mirror shatter into a thousand pieces. And may you rebuild yourself into something more beautiful and courageous than you ever dreamt of.
ESG
I want to write poetry
That shakes your bones
That rubs your skin
That breaks your reality
That turns your whole world upside down.
I want to write poetry
That completely shifts
How you see yourself
The other
And your “work”.
Realizing that life is so much more
Then tasks completed
Marketing campaigns
Growth projections
Or emails sent.
That life wants to be fully lived
Fully felt, loved and expressed.
I want you to question why
Of all the infinite possibilities and options
We decide to create ESG reports.
“Why do we consult and reward
The ones without skin and soul
Who play the parasitic game
Of an economy built on death?”
We are staring ourselves to oblivion.
Looking at screens
Connected to shallow realities
Obsessed with measurable cold data
Bound by binary zeros and ones
Detached from ultimate reality
In air-conditioned fortresses.
What would happen
When we replace
Writing reports
With reality—
Communing with actual trees?
“The real report can be found
Not in the empty green words and catch-phrases,
But looking deeply into the paper
That's derived from commodified living beings.”
“Environment”, “social” and “governance”
Are words carried
By the fragrance of death.
Dance in the sun
Cry under the moon
Shower in the rain
Compost your shit
Tuck away your screens.
Burn down your greed.
Know what's enough.
Quit your bullshit job.
“I must name you a coward
If you continue to run away
From personal suffering.”
Avoidance slings back
Like a boomerang of pain
To you on your remorseful deathbed
To the other who never received your love.
Look deeply and you'll see
That our economy is based on scarcity
While reality is woven by abundance.
I can feel your numb lingering pain
Of choosing control and security
Over life.
It's time to de-zombify ourselves
To enliven our senses
To step into the unknown
To break the chains of work as we know it
“It’s time to birth livelihoods that truly serve life.”
I do too worry about my pension
And what I leave behind after I die.
Will I leave money
Or will I leave flowers?
Will I leave commodities
Or will I return to the commons?
Ownership is an illusion
Transaction is invention.
It is my greatest nightmare
To “own” land.
While it is a wild, wet dream
To enliven place.
Reciprocate its gifts.
Bewilder souls.
Cradle love.
Enlighten life.
Conduce laughter.
Deepen intimacy.
To die courageously.
It's time to face
Our cowardice to life.
Look the beast into it's eyes
And you'll see
Your job is not about
Efficiency
Productivity
Sustainability
Shareholder value
Or “making an impact”.
“Your job is to create the conditions for life.
As you are its unique expression.”
You will die.
You will return.
Will you pass on less life?
Or will you become more of life?
Will you continue to fit
The pre-determined mould
Or will you break free
From your golden cage?
Will you solicit soul-crushing vacancies
Or will you co-create work that's uniquely yours?
Will you evolve
Your compassionate consciousness
Your capacity to love
Your ability to unconditionally give and receive?
Or will you write another ESG report?
I agree but working from within and having your hand on the steering is a much more effective strategy than yelling from the shore. This reminds me of the queer rights movement I was deeply involved in the 1990/2000s and the purity tests of who was doing the "right" strategy. The radical queers, transpeople, drag queens/kings, fetish and sex were deemed to not fit the image. We were marginalized and excluded, and how the tables have turned. There are many paths to climb a mountain. Trust that others are working on plans you may not understand or see yet.
With love and kindness, Przemek
I do not want another report
That embalms intention
In neat columns of compliance
While the world keeps bleeding.
I want a way of working
That leaves fingerprints
Mud on the knees
Witnesses who can say
“I was there. This happened.”
I do not want to measure life
Until it suffocates.
I want proof that breath moved
That hands acted
That promises crossed the threshold
Into reality.
What if legitimacy
Was not declared
But earned
In daylight
Before money ever moved.
What if trust
Was not outsourced
To logos and frameworks
But held by people
With names
And roles
And something to lose.
What if capital
Learned to wait.
Not forever
Just long enough
For truth to show its face.
Release nothing
Until action speaks.
Release more
Only when the next step
Is witnessed
And held.
What if validators
Were not priests of abstraction
But stewards of process.
Replaceable.
Rotated.
Bound to published standards
That anyone could read
And challenge.
No mysticism.
No green poetry in spreadsheets.
Just clear conditions
Met or not met
In the open.
What if reporting
Became a byproduct
Not a profession.
What if evidence
Fell out of doing
Like sweat
Like dirt
Like laughter
After real work.
Then sustainability
Would stop being a word
And become a pattern.
Not environment.
Not social.
Not governance.
But relationship.
Sequence.
Reciprocity.
Money would no longer pretend
To create impact.
It would follow it.
And those beautiful souls
Trapped in compliance theatre
Could come home
To building something
That breathes.
This is not an escape from responsibility.
It is its return.
Not burn it all down.
Reorder it.
Change the sequence
And the system follows.
The world does not need
Another ESG report.
It needs a way
For truth to arrive
Before money does.