I awoke
Too the rumble
Of a river of cars
Getting the goods
Being trucked over and over
As fuming motorists
And fuelish consumers
Whirled wide
Tank up
With great import
As their gauges reach emptily
A diction
Beyond words
Feeding this uneconomic engine
Internally combusting
A humanity greased
Plunged into a vain artery
So so leading
To an err tight garage sail
N’air to see O2 again
Only lust C’ing a singular “O!”
To be
Fallowed buy
Cryptic silence
As nature returns
A strange gift from smother earth
This poem was inspired by awaking to the rumble of cars and trucks from I-75 about a mile from my house. I am quite familiar with this noise pollution, a steady hum 24/7, though I usually only take notice of it at night or in the morning while lying in bed. Noise (and light) pollution are on my short list of pet peeves and everyday side effects of so-called civilization. However, this poem meditates on the constant stream of air pollution and inevitable environmental destruction from a carbon-based energy economy and transportation system. The congested arteries of our highways and buy ways consternate both motorists and Mother Earth — not to mention pedestrians and bicyclists. This poem also alludes to the military shenanigans (as we “tank up”) needed to assure a steady supply of a crude lifestyle. The addiction to petroleum leads us to morally depraved measures of success, such as the accepted norm that destroying the environment is part and parcel to a good economy. Such insanity brings to mind the wise aphorism: don’t shit where you eat. The metaphor of drowning in our own waste is incarnated in this poem as the suicide of exhausted and fuming motorists in their garages, the final resting place of going nowhere fast. This poem requires a certain knowledge of chemistry to be fully comprehended, specifically the chemical structure of carbon monoxide. If you also know that carbon monoxide preferentially binds, in place of oxygen, on hemoglobin, then you can more fully appreciate the breathtaking nature of this poem. The feedback of nature is neither random nor mean-spirited. Nonetheless, if humans insist on living in unsustainable ways, then nature will weed us out or prune us down to size. Perhaps this is poetic justice for smother earth…
