with clear-cased woofers for heads,
no eyes. They see us as a bat sees
a mosquito—a fleshy echo,
a morsel of sound. You’ve heard
their intergalactic tour busses
purring at our stratosphere’s curb,
awaiting the counter intelligence
transmissions from our laptops
and our earpieces, awaiting word
of humanity’s critical mass,
our ripening. How many times
have we dreamed it this way—
The Age of the Machines,
the post industrial specter
of tempered paws, five welded fingers
wrenching back our roofs,
siderophilic tongues seeking blood,
licking the crumbs of us from our beds.
O, it won’t be pretty, America.
What land would you trade
for our lives? A treaty inked
in advance of metal’s footfall.
Give them Detroit. Give them Gary,
Pittsburgh, Braddock—those forgotten
nurseries of girders and axels.
Tell the machines we honor their dead,
distant cousins. Tell them we left
those cities to repose of respect
for the bygone era of molten metal.
Tell them Carnegie and Ford
were giant men, that war glazed
their palms with gold. Tell them
we humans mourn the ecosystem
of manufacture all the same.