Category: industry

kilocalories per capita

welcome
festively slim and trim
baking inspiration
pure cane dark light white
sticky brown removed
crystals like time
sprinkled through canneries and pharmacies and photogalleries
moving hands and feet on whirling explosion electric machines
excess manufacturing amnesia

whirely crane at sunrise
(the baltimore museum of industry, founded in 1977, hosted the award of the first schaeffer industrialist of the year award, which honored a domino sugar executive, in 2004)

ibeam

steel rolled out of marsh grass
spanning miles rising stories
web and flange
ground substance
bones tissue bound
arteries recoiling
hands on scaffold
keep us
twist bend and shear

brownfield after sunrise
(wilbur ross bought sparrows point from bethlehem steel in 2003, sticking taxpayers with money owed to workers and stiffing workers out of contracted health insurance)

bioindicating

some cells are windows from outside
stacked in rows and stories
city block
building as spread sheet of data

or
people asking compromised questions
full status as persons
individuals as it
disembodied
identities fade
strenuous humanity
deleading the nation
enfeebled pseudopragmatism
power of realestatecapital like electricity mistransformed
destroying lives

institute at sunrise
(in 2001 the maryland court of appeals upheld a decision that kennedy krieger institute violated the human rights of families and children by unnecessarily exposing them to lead in order to study misguided partial abatement methods–no level of lead in their bodies is safe for children)

for jeannettes

slowly toward a city across the harbor
dolls eyes look from thickets
wild ginger dewsteeps pathside
trout lilies greenyellow bottomland
in breathing footfall rhythm
bottlebrush grass laces remnant wood
wild-rye sews small streambanks
purpletop rattles unpaved road
in thinking breathful melody
nodding bur marigolds pool dark mirrors
sneezeweed runs ditches and marsh
frostweed mounds vacant lotmeadows
in warmingchilling chorded nervemuscle
inkberries assort waxwings
winterberries cluster robins
skunk cabbages unfold turkeys
in echoing faint chorus
this year is my passing song
my love the walking minutes

cove at sunrise
(lifelong wagners point resident and activist jeannette skrzcek died in 1998 from liver and colon cancer)

in the eye of turtle island

when i withdraw
look out at my back spreading like the life of a mountain
i’m not sure the bipeds will learn i am here in some way to save them
from surviving only as machine

herring run at sunrise
(the mid-atlantic turtle & tortoise society incorporated in 1997 using po box 22321
In zipcode 21203—turtles have been on earth for a quarter of billion years, schist in herring run for half a billion, and gneiss in herring run for a billion)

noplace

rescued superfluidities
coursing through shared pipes stopping combined gloria conservation mass
blistering superchilled chemicals proud and seething
defying the simple air surrounding
lording atoms
great continuance uncommoded
serene industrial sharing
shall congregate and mingle in fellowship
letting a long beautiful utopian scream

caol pier at sunrise
(in 1995 the fairfield peninsula was designated an ecological industrial park, and industrial symbiosis spontaneously and completely transformed the city, region, and state)

brown to bright

sun light thru simple path
objectively condensing
immersing in salty nitrogen oxide smog
soaring intrinsic rainbows
living cells absorb and illuminate
radiating color buzzing art and industry
saturating dull forgotten fields
in slow steady streaking detox

brownfield at sunrise
(in 1995 twelve sites on the fairfield peninsula were reclassified from superfund sites to brownfields, creating an opportunity for redevelopment grants the city never managed to use to transform its long history of abusive jurisdiction—as it now fails to seize the opportunity to use brownfields and, in cooperation with the port administration, collocated port facilities to provide clean, sustainable, just power to the entire state of maryland)

both hands on trident

while i was gone
a pretty oily heavy metal unquenchable cruise
lost from calypso
drink the high thunderheads
swallow the strafing carpeting shrapnel walls of rain
cast away churning deep
under speed of sound winds southeast northwest
struggle to surface
to skyscraper higher billowing strike
in awful gloom
scatter

fairfield at sunrise
(in 1993 sea witch salvage began dismantling the uss coral sea and the uss illusive at a fairfield shipyard, and proceeded to endanger workers and dump asbestos, oil, scrap, paint chips, and other pollutants into the patapsco until sun reporters took notice in 1995)

weapons from somewhere in passing

from the quickly forgotten morning mist of small orchards
a deer and two black dogs walked out together
and on the edge of tarmac and weed lawn under a stray peach tree
laid down to die after a last meal of rotting fruit
their souls together becoming viscous clear to pale-yellow
dwelled in and haunted the tanks of alcolac and kromfax
and travelled across wide oceans
to rain down on towns and battlefields in mesopotamia and persia
torturing and killing the sons of a father
who would lift up a scimitar to cut off the head of brave merchants
undissuaded by fantastic stories of magic and retribution

chemical tanks at sunrise
(in 1987 a fairfield industrial chemical manufacturer began selling and shipping unheard of quantities of the main ingredient of mustard gas to criminals who sold it to iraq and iran who used it to kill thousands of soldiers and civilians)