Will technology and science save us from our busy productive, mess-making lives? From our decaying infrastructure, from our out of control technologies? Or are the things we love the root of the problem? Nobody wants to give it all up.... The poem:
Slick streets,
Black-macadam hydroplane.
Slick world,
screaming 'round death's edge on two wheels.
Curling carburetor exhalations,
a boiler's breathing,
a flatulence of furnaces,
white-metal bones empty of marrow:
cooling coils empty, cans empty,
underground tanks empty,
jugs and jars and
50-gallon drums, all empty.
Dip these parts in the sonic washer,
clean them with a soft brush
the bosses used to say, and
when the fluid begins to cloud.
Pour it out in the parking lot.
Hey you want a job or what?
It won’t hurt a thing, take my word...
My well is near here.
Please don't ask me.
This stuff makes me cough.
Please don't ask me.
But I got a mortgage.
I got kids who need to eat,
Kids who need to play Nintendo
in air-conditioned peace,
who need lobster bisque in Lennox bowls,
compact disc players, Spandex cycle pants
and grad school.
Drink this cup of poison, they say.
Drink it now or we'll find somebody who will.
Breath this. Breath it now
or we'll get somebody to do it cheaper.
The health plan will be canceled any day,
two days before you retire,
the day you're laid off.
YOU KNOW HOW IT IS, NOTHING PERSONAL.
Yes, we know how it is
but...OSHA inspects next week...
WAIT! DON'T POUR IT DOWN THE SINK.
WE'LL CUT YOUR PAY. WE'LL LAY SOME PEOPLE OFF.
WE'LL RAISE PRICES, WE'LL GET RID OF IT NICE AND LEGAL.
WE'LL ADVERTISE AS:
``POISONS INC, THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANY.''
Nervous men,
50-gallon drums and pickup trucks
cruise at 2 a.m. in the rain,
drizzling an inconspicuous trail,
down the interstate,
down narrow roads,
past the shacks,
past the housing projects,
past exclusive homes,
in the best secluded suburbs,
Hey — everybody share the risk,
after all they own it,
or they want to own it,
or they work there
or they want to work there,
or they buy the products
or they want to buy the products...
So we hide its byproducts
under a layer of grass
under a layer of dirt
under a layer of clay
under a layer of plastic
on top of two plastic liners
in a concrete pit, then
siphon off the seepage in Medusan pipes.
Industrial parks border the universal swamp,
jaundiced liver of earth, a new stew,
the complex primordial ooze, the
embryonic fluids for the chips we love,
(286, 386, 486 Pentium a series
like generations of children.
so many megahertzs strait to hell,
Zero wait state, dual pipe streams)
brought to you by the Game boys
and the home boys, the valley boys
down in Santa Clara.
And software is a clean industry, flashy
and fun, games and elegant logic so clean.
but first the hardware.
Brains, born in steaming sulfuric
on Germanium and silicone platters round as sums
shining with gold 'n aluminum 'evap'
Layer on layer on layer,
mapped in photoresist purgatory,
etched deep in Hydrofluoric hell
cleaned in brown porridge thick as shit,
stinking and simmering under reverse-flow hoods
Down in the clean room,
Down on the line,
Get me some B-12 injections in time.
50 to the inch where the acid's hit...
Down in the clean room
we all are sanctified
in our pure white robes
in our pure white hats,
The priests of this new theology,
offer chemical sacrifice
asking mysterious questions.
How many circuits
can dance on the head of a pin?
And every industry and all their customers hold mass,
celebrate the efficacious ritual sacrifice:
drink the blood of the present,
eat the flesh of the future.
The makers of batteries,
the metal platers, the printers, the copy machine makers,
the chemical makers, the makers of paints and paper,
of printed circuit boards,
the molders of plastic, the industrial opticians,
the weapons makers, the television makers, the stereo makers,
university researchers,
the private inventors,
tinkers in basements,
artists in attics,
the drivers of cars, the cleaners of ovens and toilets,
the removers of spots,
the strippers of paints, the strippers of life...
bug killers, weed killers, fungus killers,
Killers all,
(or merely motivation for mutation),
And every single living man and woman
pours a pint of poison.
We are too many.
There are too many pints.
So what if the damn unions don't like it?
And so what if 60 Minutes and Prime Time don't like it?
WELL THEN,LET THE TAIWANESE DO IT
LET THE JAPANESE DO IT
LET THE CHINESE DO IT
LET THE MEXICANS DO IT
LET THE KOREANS DO IT
LET THE AFRICANS DO IT
Let them breath it,
and drink it,
and compose odes to it...
Don't make me make this choice,
between the water
and my children's rice...
Rio Grande (Love canal II?)
HELL, WHO ELSE CAN WE GET, THE MARTIANS?
ROBOTS, THAT'S IT.
THEY NEVER CALL IN SICK.
THEY NEVER TELL.
THEY HAVE NO CHILDREN.
Sun shines.
Rain falls.
Salmon swim upstream.
Swallows come home to roost.
Land kissing air, air kissing sea, sea kissing land,
Endless passionate liplock over the whole earth,
infinite molecular exchange.
Love Canal,
I, II, III, IV, and V
mysterious chemical cesspools
as yet un-named
raining,
draining to the sea.
Meanwhile
doddering uncle EPA
fondles bloated lawyers
in the back seats of court rooms
in the anterooms of accountants
in the labyrinth
of futures
of northern oceans
of barnacles, of plankton, of small amphibians,
of dolphins, of the tribes of man.
In crusty heaps, corroding drums
on the murky floor of every harbor,
on the murky floor of rolling oceans,
the great dump,
the last material infinity:
finite, vulnerable.
And deep and uncharted, the bones and skins
of nuclear submarines
ticking, ticking
plutonium half-life ticking
half a million years.
Oh yes, go down to the shining sea
where tumored turtles die.
Cancer buds, like caulifower
on the Ancient Reptiles
encrusting the eyes,
encrusting the necks,
signs along a path,
in the garden of many paths.
Turn around. Turn around. Turn around...
Slick streets,
Black macadam, hydroplane
Slick world,
screaming 'round death's edge on two wheels.
Don’t make me make this choice,
says the mother: earth.
Will she die? Spin askew,
lifeless as Mars or Moon?
Will she metamorphose
too hot? too cold?
or spawn a viral giant-killer
and we will sleep sightless in gaseous pockets,
with tyrannosaurus rex
in perfect equality, in perfect unity,
in perfect harmony with the earth,
in perfect patience waiting to be tapped
and our crude dark form refined at last,
consumed in light resplendent,
illumining the blessed meek who inherit:
who crawl from crevices to listen
in empty kitchens
for footfalls that never come.
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Page 25, Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding (1998, Puzzled Dragon Press)
