Mechanical
Cattle bearing crosses, corralled
into satanic, dung filled stockyards.
Pigs squeal, blood spills into hot dogs.
International sweatshops work,
kinetic energy of repetitive motion
syndrome in the elbow of a slave.
Bulldoze Amazon rainforest deep
with yellow steel and the fire of gods,
spotted jaguar, run away.
Rats feed on the corpses of flood
victims, bloated and rotten,
in a hurricane’s toxic aftermath.
Smokestacks spew radioactive,
nihilistic dead zones bloom
in waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Heartland
Straight lines of green
bean plants thrive
giant sprinklers wheel
in endless circles.
Sterile soil, missing
microbes, worms.
Big Ag run off to rivers,
dead zones bloom.
Corn, potatoes, oranges,
underground suck
water from soil filled
with insects, minerals.
Basis of all human
A flower for my love,
on a Saturday morning.
Drought, dry and brown,
kills crops, children.
Modify genes to cross
seeds forever blow.
Spray with poisons, eat
with our families.
Metallic harvester come
to lay low the ripe
wheat fields of time
in sunny Autumn.
Parchment
Numbers on a screen
blink in my airport eyes,
letters carved in stone.
Oil paint printed onto thin
pulp pressed from wood,
by Gutenberg for the masses
to read by candlelight.
Digital bits move, pixels spell
out the fevered dreams,
nightmares of humans.
Paper fades brown
on a shelf of old friends
and musty adventures.
Smartphone sends
an email with Shakespeare’s
sonnets attached.
Thumb drive to eye retina,
light leaps in space, refracts,
downloads to your mind.
Tweets from Tolstoy,
on a flat, plastic tablet,
plant redwood seeds.
I want to write a poetry book.
The last one, with the last
scraps of paper from a green,
Amazon jungle before
the world finally goes
aflame like a dandelion
in a campfire, like a parking
lot in Arizona, like a species
that smashed solar panels,
shredded hemp paper.
I want to be a chimp
on a branch with a quill
and a blank scroll, maybe
a dog-eared, tattered copy
of T.S. Eliot in Japanese,
surrounded by the rage
of orange African fires,
among my troupe in trees,
all playing video games,
just an idiot writing
alliterative similes.
Steve Hood is an attorney and political activist living in Bellingham, WA. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous places, including: Crack the Spine, Waterhouse Review, 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, Marathon, Washington Free Press, and Whatcom Watch. He has published a chapbook entitled From Here To Astronomy.