June 3, 1997

Poison’daire

there’s poison in the air

which is neither seen nor heard

and when I tell them to stop it all

they tell me I’m absurd

I daren’t touch the leaves

I daren’t touch the lawn

I daren’t touch a single thing

this stuff is sprayed upon

I am slowly dying

done in by degrees

simply so that greener grass

may exist beneath the trees

and food last longer

before we eat it

and cars go faster cooler...

my life, I just can’t keep it

and since we’re all partakers

in a certain subtle sense

the people that are killing me

are me and all my friends

Out for my walk this afternoon

I smelled poison on the grass

and wondered what it did to me.

The allusion in the title is not

at any specific manufacturer,

it’s just to show that all of us

are responsible.