Refreshing San Antonio

Poetry and Art


     

Cathrine Lee

       
       

THEIR FUTURE IS DEPLETED (FALLUJA, IRAQ)
OURS IS SPENT (FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN)


Back then in 2006
Iraqis were our enemies.
They had mutilated and 
hung out to display four
dead mercenary warriors
born our country. So
we called them terrorists:
"Bitches, See you in hell…"
as our soldiers showered town
with phosphorous tracer bullets
fashioned out of
euphemistically-termed
"dense metal" (dense as 
uranium, called "depleted"
yet radioactive enough
to shatter DNA).
We showed them
a thing or two,
upped the ante
on brutality.
Made example of them 
in land our bibles still call "holy"
cradle of civilization
wholly ruined now 
see how many stillborn and
deformed Iraqi children 
deplete their future.

Back then in 2011
Japanese were economic partners.
They paid dearly for our nuke plant
plans to build near ocean water
over earthquake fault lines, 
tried cost-cutting on components, 
shoddy workmanship.
We thought them a model 
minority, then sold them
a bill of goods:
fuel rods loaded with
plutonium that, by the way,
exceeded design spec limits.
Euphemistically-termed
"safe power" (safe as long
as generators kept the cooling
fluids flowing). 
Weather showed them fluids flowing,
all right, our mother nature upped the ante
on raw power.

This maximizing profit was exposed
in March 2011:
in mushroom clouds spun as 
"hydrogen" explosions that later were
admitted to have been at least 3
cores melted down and out, 
spent fuel aerosolized into
plutonium nanoparticles circling
with the jetstream, 
precipitating snow and rain,
no word exists for high number of Sieverts-
contaminated killing cooling water 
dumped to Pacific fisheries,
still radiating and will for eons ever.

For now our invisible nuclear 
powered saints hoard riches,
profits gained.
Soon enough 
comes payback time:
for all of us, our generations' future 
lies fueled with 
radioactive silence
when survival 
just might could have been spent.



© 2013 Cathrine A. Lee