Toxic Shock [Today's News Poem, August 29, 2010]

Toxic Shock [Today's News Poem, August 29, 2010]

If you were my brother and fell off a fence
To land on the blade of the sign of the times
The stadium opens and shuts, would you wrap
Your hand with your shirt and then drive by yourself
To Kaiser, not calling me—weaving your car
While sloshing the blood 'round the floormat and drunk
On loss, and then wait in a line 'till they stitch
Your hand? Would you lie to them, saying I'm near
And circling blocks for a space, so they'd leave
You pallid, anemic and shambling down
Past levels that slant in the parking garage?
If later, you asked me to help you with chores
And told me you cut yourself walking the track,
I'd think to that time that I shouted you out
Of coma. Your pancreas rotted; you'd nap
While driving through Oakland and wake to my hand
On wheel as I'd veer us away from the road.
I'm sure at that moment you'd wake up in shock,
Then sleep once again in your guilt while I'd walk
To purchase a candy at stores where the red
On packages looks like the red of your car—
The color that links us through loneliness shared.

“At the height of this summer's heat wave, some doctors warned that a few hours of inhaling the thick, acrid smog that blanketed Moscow was like smoking a pack of cigarettes.
One scientist declared that cases of suicide, diabetes and alcoholism would soar once winter set in because of the aftereffects of the toxic smoke.”
– Alexandra Odynova, The Moscow Times, August 29, 2010
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/worries-over-smogs-effects-decline/413880.html



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The New Hydrologic Cycle [Today's News Poem, June 24, 2010]

The New Hydrologic Cycle [Today's News Poem, June 24, 2010]

The shells of the animals covered with scabs;
We baited them, hoisted from muck—from the depths
Of brine—from the bay; and we threw all those crabs
In emptied out buckets of litter for cats.
And yet I can't help but consider the drugs
My system absorbed: all that coke in the air,
The smoke from those pipes. Am I high as this bug
That lived in a bay of prescriptions we flushed
Down toilets with feces? Our message from land:
Become us. Our claret converges and soon
Digestion, excretion will crawl in the sand
Of bays, as our organs, our bones—and our teeth.
From water, to oceans of urine and blood
As cannibals fishing our young from the mud.

“Fearing that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will deal a severe blow to the bluefin tuna, an environmental group is demanding that the government declare the fish an endangered species, setting off extensive new protections under federal law. ”
– Andrew W. Lehren and Justin Gillis, The New York Times, June 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/24fish.html?hpw

“The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of only two known Atlantic bluefin spawning grounds, has only intensified the crisis. By some estimates, there may be only 9,000 of the most ecologically vital megabreeders left in the fish’s North American stock, enough for the entire population of New York to have a final bite (or two) of high-grade otoro sushi.”
– Paul Greenberg, The New York Times, June 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27Tuna-t.html

“The Superior Council of Scientific Investigations found the air in those cities to be laced with at least five drugs: amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids, lysergic acid and most prominently cocaine. Researchers found cocaine in concentrations between 29 and 850 picogram per cubic meter of air.”
– samzenpus, Slashdot, May 14, 2009
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/14/1556244

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