Shelf Life: A Poem

Shelf Life: The Poem

Steve and Isaiah pretended to be robots
When they were young and willing to scrape their knees
Long ago, they had outgrown those mediocre Gobots
They’d been force into life and now carried their degrees
On their tight backs like paper produced by smokestacks disease
They wondered what it was like to be machines and push money down slots.

Steve’s curiosity searched for products of a manufactured past.
Isaiah dreamed of questions why do bells propel minds blast.
Both wanted to observe the assembly lines
So again scarring their ancestors weakened spines.
They sail down the East River with a ship and a mast
What would it be like be like to forever fast?

Not on the holiest day of the year, they said.
In a way, if you oiled our digital gears, we’d be fed.
What will we find in all these automated smells?
Not merely fortune cookies and green hair gels,
But electric currents and elasticity
Many lost their fingers…have you heard of reciprocity?

Steve tried to climb on top of Costco’s roof
Isaiah attempted to track down the netherworld’s great proof
Next to the sculpture of dog poop in the grass
Steve thought maybe we should film the release of my gas.
Seriously, they considered acting detached and aloof.
We are making an art film, a philosophical spoof?!!!

Do not attempt to imitate our monotonous routine lives
Our shadows of consumption and production
Are they merely manufacturers of jagged steak knives?
Eating instant meals with strawberry sauce reductions.
Isaiah and Steve wondered who would of sewed their torn sleeves…

Isaiah felt like one gigantic allergic Astoria, Queens sneeze
Until he committed himself to the role of the librarian
Steve said, do you mean another disgruntled Septuagenarian?
No stupid, I meant another anal-retentive librarian.
Let’s go to the sculpture park and hang from the sculptured leaves.

They rummaged through their cerebellum’s unmentionables.
Isaiah felt the words on twisted tongues squirm.
Steve fashioned his silence a comfortable noose
Always digging for controversy peering behind his caboose.
Nothing would ever be untouchable
This life of machines had become their new worm…

by Micah Zevin 2007

"A Confused Librarian Poem" (Is there any other kind? Not!)

i stamp
and collate,
i arrange
and disseminate
discuss and
advise
with my lower half
hidden.
at the top
i feel
dizzy as
a pinwheel
but not half
as bright;
half of me
steadfast
and the other
a whirl in
perpetual
spin.

Allison Escoto 2007