In response to DavidB’s recent haiku on things electrical, my own much lengthier free verse, written after touring a coal-fired power plant near Price, Utah, with my dad and 20 or so other middle-aged nerd guys and their hapless family members.  I believe this was, in fact, the last poem written by the Undead Poet before her 18 year hiatus, and it may be one of the best, since it was about neither 1) stupid boys, nor 2) my navel.   Although those of you with a penchant for symbolic interpretation will undoubtedly assume it is both, and Dr. Freud would undoubtedly say you are right.  But I hope at least David will believe me it was in fact INTENDED BY ITS AUTHOR as a literal description of something real.

Power Plant
(6/17/89)

Even in the dim light
the heat presses against your skin, insistent
except for icy ripples dance amid the warmth
upon your legs.

Clanking, pounding, grinding
fill the air until you no longer hear them
hear nothing but a sustained, unending whine
screaming above you into the back of your mind.

In the mist of the activity
springs suddenly the emptiness
which presses the heat more strongly.

The sharpness of the greasy smell
as the nose hears decibels
of the endless scream you can’t ignore

The ironic cleanliness of it all
shiny metal and pain
beneath the oily screaming stench

Every bit of your body tense and awake, alert (not alive)
as if waiting breathlessly and terrified
for whatever may be

A glimpse, when a door is opened
in the gaping black mouth
a furious orange pulsing mass of flame

Like a peek into the pits of hell
furious and potent
and attractive.