July 2017
Joan Mazza
joan.mazza@gmail.com
joan.mazza@gmail.com
I’ve been writing a daily poem for five and a half years. This sequence of six poems began with the idea of explaining our decades of wasteful habits to future generations, something I’ve thought about frequently. I wrote this series with very little revision over five consecutive days in April 2016, before the election and before most people believed Trump would win. I wrote without forethought to an arc to the story or how I might end it. My alarm has only increased with the political changes and environmental degradation. I hope to live long enough to see this trajectory reverse. It’s hard for me to write about other things when politics is so much in my consciousness. I was happier when I was uninformed. My website: www.JoanMazza.com
Stories We Will Tell the Children of the Future
1
Big trucks arrived twice a week to haul away our waste
materials, even furniture. Trucks, like the cars we drove,
ran on a product of oil called gasoline and made a racket,
growling and groaning like monsters at our door.
They stank from decayed meat and kitchen scraps,
had an opening like a huge mouth at the back
where the trash men emptied our rubbish bins.
Powerful motors turned the muck over, squashed
it tight, compacted to be carried away to places
called landfills—mountains that grew larger each year,
and gave off methane gas and further heated the planet.
You might find it hard to believe we wasted so much,
threw away instead of reusing. It’s true we packaged goods
in materials that would never degrade or disappear.
We didn’t sort our trash, but put it all in one bin--
food tins mixed with glass and paper, plastic, paints,
broken appliances we didn’t bother to fix. This is history,
not a horror story for your entertainment or to give you
a frisson, a momentary thrill. Those trucks, on schedule,
woke us early on school days when we took buses
or cars because people had stopped walking. No one
yet worked from home or learned through the Internet.
Some people still read paper books, but most of those
were burned or sent to the landfill. Some day you will
inherit the last books, which I’ve hidden for your future.
[Published in Gloom Cupboard]
2
They told us we could have it all— huge homes
with our own exercise rooms, studies, theaters, libraries.
Though we’d long ago stopped cooking, we demanded
granite-countered kitchens with sub-zero freezers,
double-ovens, six-burner stoves, zoned air-conditioning
so we could use the fireplace in summer if the mood
struck. They told us we could own riding lawn mowers,
have pickup trucks, and a sedan for daily drives.
Some people had four cars, three boats, second homes
in other climates. All children would go to college,
never have to labor for anything. We bought bigger homes,
took equity loans, added extensions, decks, a pool
and hot tub, hired landscapers and decorators,
collected antiques, bought original art. We swiped
our credit cards as if we’d never have to pay back
what we had spent. We filed bankruptcy and did it
all again seven years later. No one told us to live within
our means, to save for a rainy day, to have a parachute,
a back-up plan for failure. Instead, they sold us jiffy meals
and survival gear, freeze-dried food, mini water
purification systems, bunkers, boots, backpacks, tents.
We owned kayaks and snow skis, but no medical
fund. Hungry all the time, we grew fatter and fatter,
refused to believe in peak oil, climate change, the truth
that bees and bats were dying. Once blue and green,
this is the world we spoiled, used up, threw away.
We thought we would surely find another. We’re still
looking up, searching for a savior, alien or divine.
3
They told us we would never have to be old, never
look like a grandmother, never grow frail and tired.
We could laser away our wrinkles, color our hair,
endure surgeries to stay smooth and perky.
Fashion coaches told us what color was trending
for the season, which ones were out, how to wear
boots with miniskirts, flat shoes with maxis.
Botox was our quick fix, silicone to plump lips.
Our hair could be long and silky with sunny
highlights, a diamond necklace at our throats
whose sag had been fixed. Knees and hips were
replaced, breasts augmented or reduced. Even men
enhanced their pecs and chins. We showered
with body washes that contained tiny abrasive
beads to exfoliate our rough skins, and fooled
ocean life into gulping it as food. We took classes
on what styles would make us look taller, thinner,
more shapely or more tailored, seminars on what
to wear to work to project a powerful image. We
stretched to distinguish between shabby chic
and casual chic, as if those terms were meaningful
in lives lasting less than a century in a universe
of billions of galaxies. Confident in our appearance,
we’d rise toward success and happiness, leaving
the losers behind. Our makeup was fool-proof,
water-proof, kiss-proof, and expensive.
They told us we were worth it.
4
We speak to you with regret about our taste for fossils.
Children of all ages so love their dinosaur toys,
their play in jungles of ferns, making sounds
they imagine for seventy million years ago. We ate them.
Everything we touched was born of their oil, coal, gas:
chairs, curtains, paint in our homes, the housing
for our computers and televisions, phones, coatings
on our pots and pans, the cups we drank from.
We ate oil even when we consumed fruits
and vegetables, which were fertilized from oil,
transported with oil, cooked with oil heat. Clothing
was produced from plastics made from oil, packaged
in plastic, mailed in plastic bubbles, delivered by trucks
that ran on oil. We raped the earth for more oil and gas,
blasted water under pressure for hydraulic fracturing,
for oil, extracted it from tar sands, spilled it into seas
and oceans. We even blew off mountain tops for fossil
fuel: coal, last remnants of the lush forests that once
covered the planet. We left you a mess: barren,
eroded land where once great elms and chestnuts
grew. We threw trash out of car windows while
we drove using oil, threw it into woods and fields
and the ditches along our roads paved with oil.
Profligate as nature making seeds in abundance,
we gobbled every resource we thought would last
forever, left you a world used up, contaminated,
spoiled beyond repair. Sorry. So sorry. We can never
express enough sorrow to be worthy of forgiveness.
5
You might find this hard to believe, but once
we were a species who made music, who danced
and sang. In schools, children sang in groups
called glee clubs or chorus led by special teachers
whose job was to teach music appreciation--
as if that needed to be stressed instead of simply
experienced. Once there were art teachers with closets
filled with paints and paper, charcoal and easels
for children to enjoy. There were museums with walls
of famous paintings worth millions. Schools
had drama clubs, performed plays and musicals,
held concerts for winter holidays and again in spring.
For entertainment, people gathered in arenas
and huge auditoriums not to hear leaders harangue them
for hours, but to hear works of Bach, Beethoven,
Haydn, Stravinsky, Puccini, Verdi. Even the songs
of Elvis, The Beatles, Gershwin were revered.
I risk my life to say these names, but hope someday
you will hear their music, dance a waltz or lindy-hop,
hold in your arms a cello more lovely than a woman,
close your eyes and sway to rhythms as precious
as the tides of oceans when the water was still blue.
6
And now I whisper to only the girls and young women.
When I was your age, girls went to school with boys,
could go on to higher education, become doctors, dentists,
attorneys, even rabbis. At one time, three women sat as judges,
were on the Supreme Court of nine. Women had knowledge
and access to birth control, didn’t have to marry or have children,
could even have children without husbands, choose the size
of their families. They could travel alone, buy homes without asking
permission, didn’t need a man to co-sign documents. Women were
senators and CEOs. They could become millionaires by working.
Women were allowed to drive cars, fly planes, work in construction,
computer development, advise companies. They could
become architects, policemen, or go to war. For forty-five years
abortion was legal and safe. No woman had to stay with anyone
who abused her. Yes! It’s true! Before Lord Trump rose to power
worldwide and became our leader twenty years ago, women
were considered equal to men. They spoke in public. They didn’t
have to hide at home and fear for their lives. I was a feminist!
Don’t hush me! I will teach you to read in secret so you will know
that the past can teach what the future might be. Make it so.
This is my last lesson before they find me and cut off my head.
Big trucks arrived twice a week to haul away our waste
materials, even furniture. Trucks, like the cars we drove,
ran on a product of oil called gasoline and made a racket,
growling and groaning like monsters at our door.
They stank from decayed meat and kitchen scraps,
had an opening like a huge mouth at the back
where the trash men emptied our rubbish bins.
Powerful motors turned the muck over, squashed
it tight, compacted to be carried away to places
called landfills—mountains that grew larger each year,
and gave off methane gas and further heated the planet.
You might find it hard to believe we wasted so much,
threw away instead of reusing. It’s true we packaged goods
in materials that would never degrade or disappear.
We didn’t sort our trash, but put it all in one bin--
food tins mixed with glass and paper, plastic, paints,
broken appliances we didn’t bother to fix. This is history,
not a horror story for your entertainment or to give you
a frisson, a momentary thrill. Those trucks, on schedule,
woke us early on school days when we took buses
or cars because people had stopped walking. No one
yet worked from home or learned through the Internet.
Some people still read paper books, but most of those
were burned or sent to the landfill. Some day you will
inherit the last books, which I’ve hidden for your future.
[Published in Gloom Cupboard]
2
They told us we could have it all— huge homes
with our own exercise rooms, studies, theaters, libraries.
Though we’d long ago stopped cooking, we demanded
granite-countered kitchens with sub-zero freezers,
double-ovens, six-burner stoves, zoned air-conditioning
so we could use the fireplace in summer if the mood
struck. They told us we could own riding lawn mowers,
have pickup trucks, and a sedan for daily drives.
Some people had four cars, three boats, second homes
in other climates. All children would go to college,
never have to labor for anything. We bought bigger homes,
took equity loans, added extensions, decks, a pool
and hot tub, hired landscapers and decorators,
collected antiques, bought original art. We swiped
our credit cards as if we’d never have to pay back
what we had spent. We filed bankruptcy and did it
all again seven years later. No one told us to live within
our means, to save for a rainy day, to have a parachute,
a back-up plan for failure. Instead, they sold us jiffy meals
and survival gear, freeze-dried food, mini water
purification systems, bunkers, boots, backpacks, tents.
We owned kayaks and snow skis, but no medical
fund. Hungry all the time, we grew fatter and fatter,
refused to believe in peak oil, climate change, the truth
that bees and bats were dying. Once blue and green,
this is the world we spoiled, used up, threw away.
We thought we would surely find another. We’re still
looking up, searching for a savior, alien or divine.
3
They told us we would never have to be old, never
look like a grandmother, never grow frail and tired.
We could laser away our wrinkles, color our hair,
endure surgeries to stay smooth and perky.
Fashion coaches told us what color was trending
for the season, which ones were out, how to wear
boots with miniskirts, flat shoes with maxis.
Botox was our quick fix, silicone to plump lips.
Our hair could be long and silky with sunny
highlights, a diamond necklace at our throats
whose sag had been fixed. Knees and hips were
replaced, breasts augmented or reduced. Even men
enhanced their pecs and chins. We showered
with body washes that contained tiny abrasive
beads to exfoliate our rough skins, and fooled
ocean life into gulping it as food. We took classes
on what styles would make us look taller, thinner,
more shapely or more tailored, seminars on what
to wear to work to project a powerful image. We
stretched to distinguish between shabby chic
and casual chic, as if those terms were meaningful
in lives lasting less than a century in a universe
of billions of galaxies. Confident in our appearance,
we’d rise toward success and happiness, leaving
the losers behind. Our makeup was fool-proof,
water-proof, kiss-proof, and expensive.
They told us we were worth it.
4
We speak to you with regret about our taste for fossils.
Children of all ages so love their dinosaur toys,
their play in jungles of ferns, making sounds
they imagine for seventy million years ago. We ate them.
Everything we touched was born of their oil, coal, gas:
chairs, curtains, paint in our homes, the housing
for our computers and televisions, phones, coatings
on our pots and pans, the cups we drank from.
We ate oil even when we consumed fruits
and vegetables, which were fertilized from oil,
transported with oil, cooked with oil heat. Clothing
was produced from plastics made from oil, packaged
in plastic, mailed in plastic bubbles, delivered by trucks
that ran on oil. We raped the earth for more oil and gas,
blasted water under pressure for hydraulic fracturing,
for oil, extracted it from tar sands, spilled it into seas
and oceans. We even blew off mountain tops for fossil
fuel: coal, last remnants of the lush forests that once
covered the planet. We left you a mess: barren,
eroded land where once great elms and chestnuts
grew. We threw trash out of car windows while
we drove using oil, threw it into woods and fields
and the ditches along our roads paved with oil.
Profligate as nature making seeds in abundance,
we gobbled every resource we thought would last
forever, left you a world used up, contaminated,
spoiled beyond repair. Sorry. So sorry. We can never
express enough sorrow to be worthy of forgiveness.
5
You might find this hard to believe, but once
we were a species who made music, who danced
and sang. In schools, children sang in groups
called glee clubs or chorus led by special teachers
whose job was to teach music appreciation--
as if that needed to be stressed instead of simply
experienced. Once there were art teachers with closets
filled with paints and paper, charcoal and easels
for children to enjoy. There were museums with walls
of famous paintings worth millions. Schools
had drama clubs, performed plays and musicals,
held concerts for winter holidays and again in spring.
For entertainment, people gathered in arenas
and huge auditoriums not to hear leaders harangue them
for hours, but to hear works of Bach, Beethoven,
Haydn, Stravinsky, Puccini, Verdi. Even the songs
of Elvis, The Beatles, Gershwin were revered.
I risk my life to say these names, but hope someday
you will hear their music, dance a waltz or lindy-hop,
hold in your arms a cello more lovely than a woman,
close your eyes and sway to rhythms as precious
as the tides of oceans when the water was still blue.
6
And now I whisper to only the girls and young women.
When I was your age, girls went to school with boys,
could go on to higher education, become doctors, dentists,
attorneys, even rabbis. At one time, three women sat as judges,
were on the Supreme Court of nine. Women had knowledge
and access to birth control, didn’t have to marry or have children,
could even have children without husbands, choose the size
of their families. They could travel alone, buy homes without asking
permission, didn’t need a man to co-sign documents. Women were
senators and CEOs. They could become millionaires by working.
Women were allowed to drive cars, fly planes, work in construction,
computer development, advise companies. They could
become architects, policemen, or go to war. For forty-five years
abortion was legal and safe. No woman had to stay with anyone
who abused her. Yes! It’s true! Before Lord Trump rose to power
worldwide and became our leader twenty years ago, women
were considered equal to men. They spoke in public. They didn’t
have to hide at home and fear for their lives. I was a feminist!
Don’t hush me! I will teach you to read in secret so you will know
that the past can teach what the future might be. Make it so.
This is my last lesson before they find me and cut off my head.
© 2017 Joan Mazza
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