It's too late for our planet. Earth is already polluted past repair: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, spent atomic fuel rods stored everywhere and unable to be destroyed; three gigantic eddies of trash in the oceans; India and others pouring rivers of raw sewage into the waters we drink; factories everywhere filling the skies with poison that we breathe. If we had any sense, we would find another planet to inhabit and destroy right now. Those who say "global warming" doesn't exist should be left behind to cope for themselves.
THE LATE, LATE SHOW
By Lewis Turco
It is now ten minutes after midnight,
December 5th, 1965. In honor
of the attack by the Japanese
on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on
December 7th, 1941, all channels
are running movies about war. On one
channel, the come-on is newsreel footage of the
bombing inserted into a film
made by the Japanese. Channel
9 has topped that: also Japanese, the movie is
science-fiction: the Third World War is just
beginning. I'll take a gangster film — Channel 3:
it sounds incredible, but the third
world war is already over
over here. This one is American. Let me check
the T. V. Guide: "'Five.' (1951).
The only five survivors of atomic war
revive man's ancient hostilities
and prejudices." The whole thing
is starting again. So I have turned to writing this
The Virginia Quarterly Review "The Mutable Past," a memoir collected in FANTASEERS, A BOOK OF MEMORIES by Lewis Turco of growing up in the 1950s in Meriden, Connecticut, (Scotsdale AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005).
The Tower Journal Two short stories, "The Demon in the Tree" and "The Substitute Wife," in the spring 2009 issue of Tower Journal.
The Tower Journal A story, "The Car," and two poems, "Fathers" and "Year by Year"
The Tower Journal Memoir, “Pookah, The Greatest Cat in the History of the World,” Spring-Summer 2010.
The Michigan Quarterly Review This is the first terzanelle ever published, in "The Michigan Quarterly Review" in 1965. It has been gathered in THE COLLECTED LYRICS OF LEWIS TURCO/WESLI COURT, 1953-2004 (www.StarCloudPress.com).
The Gawain Poet An essay on the putative medieval author of "Gawain and the Green Knight" in the summer 2010 issue of Per Contra.
The Black Death Bryan Bridges' interesting article on the villanelle and the terzanelle with "The Black Death" by Wesli Court as an example of the latter.
Seniority: Six Shakespearian Tailgaters This is a part of a series called "Gnomes" others of which have appeared in TRINACRIA and on the blog POETICS AND RUMINATIONS.
Reinventing the Wheel, Modern Poems in Classical Meters An essay with illustrations of poems written in classical meters together with a "Table of Meters" and "The Rules of Scansion" in the Summer 2009 issue of Trellis Magazine
The Late, Late Show
It's too late for our planet. Earth is already polluted past repair: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, spent atomic fuel rods stored everywhere and unable to be destroyed; three gigantic eddies of trash in the oceans; India and others pouring rivers of raw sewage into the waters we drink; factories everywhere filling the skies with poison that we breathe. If we had any sense, we would find another planet to inhabit and destroy right now. Those who say "global warming" doesn't exist should be left behind to cope for themselves.
THE LATE, LATE SHOW
By Lewis Turco
It is now ten minutes after midnight,
December 5th, 1965. In honor
of the attack by the Japanese
on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on
December 7th, 1941, all channels
are running movies about war. On one
channel, the come-on is newsreel footage of the
bombing inserted into a film
made by the Japanese. Channel
9 has topped that: also Japanese, the movie is
science-fiction: the Third World War is just
beginning. I'll take a gangster film — Channel 3:
it sounds incredible, but the third
world war is already over
over here. This one is American. Let me check
the T. V. Guide: "'Five.' (1951).
The only five survivors of atomic war
revive man's ancient hostilities
and prejudices." The whole thing
is starting again. So I have turned to writing this
poem as I watch. I have survived one
Armageddon; I shall build a microcosm.
I am writing very carefully:
the woman is pregnant, and the
Negro is building a house. I want my facts to be
accurate, in case this is the last thing
to be left. The sounds do not matter, only the
sense. If you are reading this, I hope
that it will not upset you, sir,
whoever you are. It may be that my typewriter
was hocked, passed peacefully from dark shelf to
dark shelf in ancient shops until it was sold for
scrap. Grant us this: that was possible.
But if you should find this lying
rolled in my machine, the letters of our alphabet
scrambled in the dust, grant us this much more:
we foresaw the end too clearly for it to matter.
From Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition from Amazon.
December 18, 2014 in American History, Americana, Books, Commentary, Criticism, Current Affairs, History, Politics, Television | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: atomic fuel rods, pollution, racism, raw sewage, trash