Dynamite and Machines

First Posted on Medium 12/18/2022

A poem about a Town

Photo by Randy Jacob on Unsplash

The brown rain soiled

under a rusted sky,

rainbows in puddles’ oil.

The elements enchained, we’re

swallowed up in steel beasts.

A bustling town but few faces-just fences,

jackhammers grinding their teeth,

the trees we made, strung up,

wires for branches, blistering tar,

bleeding, storming energy,

electrons screaming silently

(tamed only by the birds who could care less),

Fading paint on black fields, few

plants stuck in rectangles, and the

trash oozing from every pore. Where does

trash end and town begin, are we

human as we were before?

We, the fish that walked.

We’re pretending we beat her

But she wins as long as we

need her, mother nature,

her clean rain and dirt grave,

and those distant mountains,

rock faces frozen in fear of

our dynamite and machines.