This poem is published in the Fou Magazine 

 

A Law of Inevitability

In our city of tomorrow, machines have malfunctioned

again. So much gone haywire and once more we ask:

why are the things we designed to play chess trying to kill us?

It happens: a quiet dinner, interrupted at the window

by a pair of eyes, red and pulsing. Will you be the homeowner

to welcome the murderous toaster oven inside?

 

Erstwhile, in a lesser age at the zoo, you lunge

into the monster pit to retrieve a pretty lady’s errant hat.

Soon enough, hirsute with shame, you find yourself

in a Komodo Dragon’s claws, and in its jaws you recollect

your wrongs. Hard as it is, you must acknowledge

the Earth and its axis of which you are no longer part.

 

Imagine a hunter, his ankle snared in his bear trap.

Even now, at the city limits, ostriches are neck-deep in sand

and the first of many meteorologists lay down before the monsoon.

Who claims catastrophe as a crèche? The guilty are always

alphabetized in time. Calamity, though it could have been

by any hand, it was most likely ours, more likely mine.