Monday, April 6, 2009

The Belles of the Ball

Human life is a case of nuclear waste,
festering and buried deep beneath
Minnesota’s Iron Range, where it
waits to sprout mineral wings.

The sound of their tinny nourishment
beat destruction down on everything
that was and now isn’t. Nothing left
living at least nothing actually breathing.

Earth’s orbiting satellites jest “Sic”
semper tyrannis,” having witnessed
the end of a natural habitat. They’re
left to bask in independence,

taste their metallically bonded
tongues and laugh and laugh and
yet, Man’s memory lives on still
in the corporeal nostrils

of the lake’s dry shores whose
inhalation of the fallout radiates
consistent in the forever long
and sordid winter.

The satellites observe these
no-longer-spoken borders where,
above them, dimly lit monitors
click and klack meditatively…

The crags of once great lakes
cast shadows on their depth.
The hypocenters echo the
spirit of a dying planet

awestruck by its sole
inorganic inhabitants.