La
Brea: Landscape With Tourists
Light winces
into rainbows on the black,
Tar-wrinkled seethe that surfaces these lakes
Where every fart and gurgle methane makes --
Slow bubbles plumping, glinting, falling slack,
Dimpling the slick face of the thickest goo,
Or swiftly gushing geysers that erupt
Through watery muck, spikes frothy and abrupt --
Delivers a dark whiff of primal stew
While we in snapshot sunshine amble, snack,
Inhale the warm stench of extinction's zoo,
The stink of meat a million years corrupt,
Unfazed by any sense this scent awakes
With each new pffft of prehistoric gas
That we're all this, as in "this too shall pass."
Copyright © 2001 Chris O'Carroll
