"What Hath God Wrought"

By Gerardine Baugh©2007


Hot-dipped, galvanized construction, stainless steel
Forty-six towers and 129 Antennas
within eight miles of my home
Microwave antennas, cellular radio antenna platforms
wireless internet, LPTV antennas, PCS/GSM


Buttons, colors, lights, music, special sounds,
unremitting connections to work, silence no longer our option
lines, dashes, dots, symbols, once Morse code, now text
A paradox of what we can’t live without, marketed as what we need.


Children play near its base, children carry the phones
air clear, clean, safe, so we’re told. We listen, without free thought
riding around and around on its foundation
Built on profit
imagine the future, or lack of one…


Now…
Emptiness…
Silence…
Void of paranoid thoughts of safety
caricatures of life, twisted, copper pairs.. melted


A women and man stand in line to buy a cell phone,
I waited and watched.
Questions were asked and answered to formulate the sale
will this work if…
terrorists attack, earthquake, fire or loss of power?


Movement in the air touches the dead, radiation, explosions, screams of pain
thick dust chokes off life,
shock, disbelief, horror of truth
lies promoted, accepted, preventing questions
as the tower, dead torn from the ground, collapses


They look for safety inside of this small phone
They need to hear it will save them
They need to feel secure in a world with uncertainty
They walked away with three hundred dollars of incoherent protection
I move forward,


Heavy cable broken, twisted metal
unchecked radiation
burned the ground, destroying
not our fault, they said earth emits the same as the tower
We choose not to notice the lie.


The salesman smiles and shows me his most expensive cell phone
I put my glasses on and still couldn’t read the numbers
I ask how necessary is it, in this time of ambiguity, to have this phone?
He insists in an emergency it will be my lifeline
I look over the paper work written slightly smaller than the key pad


The air heats up
birds drop from the skies
The oceans poisoned flow in patches of red
panic follows the drifting dust which
hides the sun


I check out the coverage area
times and prices
I’m shown colors, gimmicks
I can send photos, and jokes
I can vote from my phone. I will never get lost, so I am told


Who will help me?
When the phone heats up my cells
When it changes my DNA
When gone are all the trees, having followed the bees
When the phone no longer works because no one is alive to hear it ring?


I ask how it will make my life easier
won’t it just make it shorter?
Another reason to procrastinate, to avoid reality
Is this just another addiction like cigarettes, or methamphetamine? I just can’t smell it in the air. I just turn away from the illogical stench..


Who will make sure the phone works when the towers go down
distress overwhelms as we dial over and over on a phone that doesn’t have a signal
equipment left unattended, stops working..
But I will keep pressing the buttons;
Because I was told, it would keep me safe…