Return of the Sacrificial King [Today's News Poem, August 24, 2010]
For C.B.
A prophet had visions—I read it in story.
The crust was inverted; its guts rose to surface.
A mask of its final repose was the glory
Of termites; siafu: the mandible creatures.
He lived in a room in a flat that was tilted.
And witnessed the omens that nature transmitted:
The rotting of cars and the gardens that wilted.
The rust of the canisters mixed with their contents
To sprout—between junk heaps—a blackberry angle.
It bundled the weeds and the splinters, transmuting
Exposure to toxins, that spilled on the tangles,
To venom by berry—for givers of poison.
He listened to cooing one evening; a growling,
A gnawing—it sounded like mating or murder.
He opened his door and he followed the howling
From kitchen to staircase. A junkie was laughing.
“They're licking my foot in a gesture of friendship,”
Raccoons were both ripping his toes from their knuckles.
The moon served as witness: the essence was worship
That fell through the cracks to the vines down below them.
While starlight possessed him, he called to the cosmos:
“Where will we live when the world is a graveyard?
And where will be bury our dead when the magma
Surfaces, coating the planet with buildings?”
“A new study finds oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from a ruptured BP well degraded at a rate that was "much faster than anticipated" thanks to the interaction of microbes with the oil particles. ”
– Vivian Kuo, CNN,August 24, 2010 5:51 p.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/24/gulf.oil.study/
“For more than nine days, for more than 60 miles, thousands of Beijing-bound vehicles have come to a virtual standstill on a stretch of highway called the 110 (honest!) that runs from Inner Mongolia southeast to the nation's capital.”
– Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2010 Edition
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-traffic-20100825,0,3689656.story
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