Consumers, Global Capitalists, Environmentalists, Weirdos
.
Besides, by then we were using the new organic
toasters grown on huge toaster
farms to avoid the mountain-making refuse
of earlier ages: no steel, no plastic, no fierce
glowing coils, those were relics
too readily relegated to the world’s
landfills, we grew our toasters just like God intended,
we no longer carried guns
but oversized breeds of bombardier beetles,
and we used genetically modified lightning bugs
for all our light, and when all
these things died, we gave them proper burials,
and the consumers were happy because they could forge
spiritual connections
deep and abiding with a variety
of brands and species, and the global capitalists
were thrilled, too, because to make
every consumable product organic,
a veritable living thing, is to guarantee
perpetual repeated
obsolescence, thus guaranteeing non-stop
cycles of product-purchase, product-care, product-loss,
and luxe product-funeral,
and the environmentalists were super
stoked we’d stopped strip-mining the planet even if it
meant we had to ride inside
our armadillodons to work every day,
and the weirdos? Well, the weirdos would still congregate
in the huge toaster graveyards
like weirdos and contemplate the way of all
flesh before lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette with
a sleepy little firebug
they’d crush between their fingers once they’d used it.
.
.
Cover image details: River Landscape with Crane and Barges, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1927, National Gallery of Art.
Stephen Kampa is the author of four volumes of poetry, the most recent being World Too Loud to Hear. He teaches at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL. He also works as a musician and can be heard on One Morning Soon by Robert Top Thomas.
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