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SEATTLE By: Jonathan Mertzig
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The sun rises over Puget Sound,
As digital clocks scream out
a new age rooster call.
The people wake to another day,
Filled with their virtual pleasures
and Prozac dreams .
The businessman dons a earth-tone suit
and puts on a pair of high-tech hiking boots.
Highways that wind scenic mountains
into expressways,
Quickly fill with Range Rovers and Explorers.
Another day of virtual business
and cyber-transactions begins,
as the electronic shopping centers open.
Kids ride off to school for another day
of 1990's vocabulary.
A child recites words like processor
and gigabyte,
a language all to common to them.
A man sits idle in a nursing home,
technology's victim left behind in the dust,
as his nurse logs on to her favorite website.
Modern tycoons sit at desks,
looking for ways to make an even faster buck.
Jobs are created as jobs are lost.
All as a new alternative band sits
in a recording studio, waiting for their big break.
All of this part of a new age panorama
stretching as far as the eye can see,
Filled with yuppies and wannabies with egoes
as big as the state of Washington.
The people leave their schools and workplaces,
all headed for some kind of stylish coffeehouse.
They rattle off names like "Triple-latte
Mochacinno with an extra shot of espresso"
all so fast they have no idea what they ordered.
They sit on fancy chairs
and Parisian-style cafe tables.
All eyes on the hikers and cyclists heading out
for their daily adventure.
Others sit listening to a poet
speak the most senseless poem you've ever heard,
but here everyone is equal, so every poem is deep.
As night falls the people grow restless,
They all put on clothes of sickening colors,
And head to some alternative club,
as one big psychotic mass.
As the black night drags on,
the people drown their sorrows
by getting drunk and seemingly high,
Never realizing there life has reached its low.
The businessman, the rebellious grunge crowd
as well as everyone else head home to sleep.
All this so they can awake to another day of dreams.
Dreams as high as Mt. Rainier.
Their dreams may seem great,
but no one wants to face the facts,
That one fateful day it might come to an end.
The great Mt. Rainier, once their mythic
symbol of strength may blow its top.
Leaving shattered dreams and a broken empire.
But they don't care, they never do.
Why should they?
After all.......
It is Seattle.
(C) 1995, 1998 – Jonathan Mertzig
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