Half Lives

Poetry
is just like mining Radium,
said Mayakovsky.
He was right,
in more ways than he imagined.




Exploration.
A word for
The turning over, drilling,
punching holes in the everyday
in the search
for one
perfect
crystal of language,
that glowing, deadly handful of invisible agitation.


Extraction.
A word for
Seeing friends and places as deposits
for harvesting
taking
ripping
everything you can get
until they're all used up.
(Volatile substances may be used,
serious injuries may result.)


Byproduct.
A word for
Aftermaths.
Blasted earths
glowing trinkets
bone cancer for minimal wages
Superfund sites
and abdicated responsibility.
A word for
someone else's problem.


"the incident dissolved"
read Mayakovsky's suicide note
leaving weeping mistresses,
secret children
and
the most beautiful station
in the Moskovsky metropoliten.