ASYMPTOTE
by Chris Brandt
Stripmines eat away a mountain range
nukes eat silently our cellular defenses
the banks eat possibilities of change,
and entertainment giants eat our senses.
Children eat preservatives or grass
by geogenetic accident of class.
Men kill time in Pentagon cafes
mouthing war games, cooking up a name
to call death on the news. In that maze
generals come and go, hungering for fame,
talking first strike and spots marked X,
and feeding us their steel-headed sex.
In the city, a real vegetable's a find,
but tv dieticians get 5 C's a day
to make cardboard taste good in our mind,
and when the chemical technicians have their way
we will eat oil though it eats us back
and Exxon fattens up on what we lack.
It takes nine weeks to die of malnutrition,
for a body's million mouths to eat it -
how long will it take a world in this condition,
living on its poisons, to be deleted?
And there is no purpose, there are no heroes.
Eating our future til we're nothing but zeroes.
from:
3 POETS 4 PEACE
poems
AGAINST THE TIDE
of war
(March, 2003)
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