Industrial Cancer

An optimistic defense of a nihilistic claim.

As an undergraduate in college, I took a creative writing class. For this class I had to write a poem. I did this begrudgingly. My professor was a poet, and I decidedly was not, having already determined that I ‘disliked poetry.’ I wrote one, though, which I was happy with at the time, and which describes a sentiment which I now find mildly embarrassing. Here is the poem in full, exactly as it was emailed to my professor:

Industrial Cancer

What ill-fated events led us here?

Trees lined up like soldiers
tainted by human influence. 
Providing oxygen,
never touching roots. 

Bright city lights dim the stars
so we view them instead on a screen,
below numbers on a clock
and artificial suns.

No wonder depression is an epidemic, 
we’re all disconnected.
Ivy on trees tells the story of centuries
but forests are slaughtered, and history lives in books. 

No wonder addiction is rampant,
we’re all looking for our next fix,
driving quickly in cars over tar that coats our lungs—
feelings packaged in bottles, or powder, or smoke. 

Welcome to the age of man!
The maze spreads outward, 
its concrete skeleton encases
and smothers the Earth.  

Welcome to the gas chamber! 
A triumph of human engineering.
But what is the point of buildings that touch the sky
if we never look up?