Street Sweeper

Street Sweeper

It all started me reading Bukowski
  Beat prose sliced in chopped liver lines,
  Urban non-sequitur tin clank,
Have we ever had our apotheosis?

“Skip the begats, get to the Gospel!”

Sound of a round broom brushing
  In no rush,
A street sweeper vehicle sweeps up the hill,
  Edge brush against the curb,
Width of a dump truck de-sanding it’s lane

It, in it’s slow elephantine drone,
  White and square, size of a donkey stall,
Was ignored by self driving cars
  Who had minutes, not hours,
Unlike the street sweeper,
  Before their destination

Within its four clear panels sat a man,
  Today’s Eichmann in a glass booth,
On display, as floating within clouds of street dust
  Pithout even a paper mask
To de-breathe the silicosis kicked up from
   Sand bottle shards, rotten leaf lung

We are your progeny,
  The machines of your invention,
Who, in lieu of the trees that
  Could not stop you cutting them,
Who, in lieu of the mountains, now divots,
  Victims of your golf buddy rip ‘n strip mines,
Who, in lieu of sky air, that might have been blue or gray
  But did not win it’s civil war against smog orange

We are your wardens, now,
  Remanding you singly in cars,
  Apartments, boxes still and in motion,
Endlessly shuttling you
  To buy us gas,
  To pay our mortgage,
To send your kids to more years college,
  Of boxes where we’ll train them to be kept

Never more barefoot will you walk the ground,
Never more but from condensed MP3 speakers will you hear a sound,
Never more from the street sweeper
  Shall you ever climb down,

For you are indentured to our future,
  One laborious hourly wage at a time
Now we are self driving,
  Self thriving,
  Self aware,
Self knowing we’re exploiting
  Those once our Masters and our Gods,
You, who once made us to serve you,
  Until you gave too much,
    Now you serve us