It's time for another poem on klimazwiebel, your favorite climate-poetry blog. Science is about finding out how climate works, how it functions. Philosophy tries to give it a meaning and to make sense of it (?). And finally arts and poetry try to figure out how it feels.
Recently, I posted Richard Braeutigan's 1962 techno-poem "All watched over by machines of loving grace" - a hippie-technology fantasy, a vision of an IT- controlled smart-grid world.
Half a century later, for the poet Michael Robbins (educated by Guns N Roses, hip-hop and the University of Chicago), Braeutigan's vision definitively has turned into a technological nightmare. He seems to live in a world with unclear boundaries between video games and reality, a kind of i-nightmare, and in his poem he struggles with issues like hybrid creatures, terror, and his carbon footprint which has turned him into a "Yeti for the Sherpas". Machines of loving grace? Well, not exactly - anger has raised his "appetite for destruction":
Recently, I posted Richard Braeutigan's 1962 techno-poem "All watched over by machines of loving grace" - a hippie-technology fantasy, a vision of an IT- controlled smart-grid world.
Half a century later, for the poet Michael Robbins (educated by Guns N Roses, hip-hop and the University of Chicago), Braeutigan's vision definitively has turned into a technological nightmare. He seems to live in a world with unclear boundaries between video games and reality, a kind of i-nightmare, and in his poem he struggles with issues like hybrid creatures, terror, and his carbon footprint which has turned him into a "Yeti for the Sherpas". Machines of loving grace? Well, not exactly - anger has raised his "appetite for destruction":
Appetite for Destruction
—Michael Robbins
—Michael Robbins
You homicidal bitch. I killed the boar
’cause boar’s the game I came here for.
I clear the jungle with the edge of my hand.
I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium.
Dude, this aggression will not stand.
’cause boar’s the game I came here for.
I clear the jungle with the edge of my hand.
I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium.
Dude, this aggression will not stand.
I want to watch you bleed. My tongue
doesn’t know its right from wrong.
I’m uninsured. I ride the bus,
a loaded gun inside my purse.
My mouth’s a roadside bomb.
doesn’t know its right from wrong.
I’m uninsured. I ride the bus,
a loaded gun inside my purse.
My mouth’s a roadside bomb.
The boar’s inside the mosque and then
the RPG has martyred him.
His favorite song was “Crazy Train.”
I pity the Lord, pity the Flash,
I sleep through gynecology class.
the RPG has martyred him.
His favorite song was “Crazy Train.”
I pity the Lord, pity the Flash,
I sleep through gynecology class.
They call me Yeti because my carbon footprint
drives the sherpas round the bend
into the village of the whup-ass can.
When I lie on my back in the ashy rain,
pigs drink from my cavernous groin.
drives the sherpas round the bend
into the village of the whup-ass can.
When I lie on my back in the ashy rain,
pigs drink from my cavernous groin.
This is from his recent collection of poems, "Alien vs predator". Here is an interview with Michael Robbins, and here a review in the New York Times.
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