Written while working a crappy temp job in the bowels of one of Seattle’s industrial suburbs, Cannonball Island recounts Matthew’s search for peace of mind amidst streetscapes and treescapes. With a punchy style (think Indian flute through a jazz mute) CI explores the sense of alienation present in both the wilderness and the metropolis and hints at a possible reconciliation between the two.
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Renton
My office moved down to Renton this weekend
upon the fruited industrial plain
where on enormous steel and concrete plantations
they raise tractor-trailer trucks, sales reports
and aeroplanes
They took away my one window
so now my only view is through this single ceiling panel
that has yet to be installed
and if you get right beneath it you can see
way up through the cavernous murk
to the warehouse roof
And somewhere beyond that
the pure blue sky
The wetlands outside must have looked threatening
so they wrapped them up in a chain-link fence
and now the blackberries and wild rose
reach through the links
like little hands
And at 4:30 each and every afternoon
a massive flock of crows descends
to shit on all our cars
But the neon signs are an eternal bloom
of box stores and carry-out joints
and so the people are happy
For they do not recollect
that this was once a mighty forest
and that now they trod upon
unmarked graves