August 3: Opening Ceremonies, Kyle Dargan, "Olympic Drive"

Well, in two days the Summer Olympics in Rio kick off with the Opening Ceremonies.

I'm not usually a fan of sports.  I go to high school football games in the fall simply to see my daughter play in the marching band.  I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.  However, I love watching the Olympics.  I think it has to do with the combination of competition and cultures.  Learning about a country's history and people.

Well, I came across a poem by Kyle Dargan that I thought was about the Olympics.  It's not.  It's about race and poverty and the end of the world.  Another quasi science fiction poem.  It's a great poem, but has little to do with the Olympics.

Saint Marty thinks there should be an Olympic event in poetry.  How about a sonnet slam?  Or a villanelle vault?  Haiku high jump?

Olympic Drive

by:  Kyle Dargan

Across from the gorgeous dog park,

men dream against poodle-pissed trees — 

their pillows made from breath captured

in milk cartons. Only arid, temperate

climate offers respite. Let us suppose

they have tales, here in this city

where filmed stories turn a mint.

All around, one wide screen — the dark hills

due north pixel-pocked with villa lights.

Below, streets hemmed with haggard

brown men — jack-in-the-box bodies

ever unfolding. Who is pitching

this script? Title: “The Child of 1968.”

Voiceover: After the Integration Apocalypse,

one man must find his way in a land

where the sole survivors who look or speak

like him are those rendered disturbed

and indigent. Assume the Motion Picture

Association eager to levy a “Rated R,”

then remember that those who judge

violence never shared your definition

of savagery. A culling is all your eyes

decipher — your herd thinned. No urban

wildlife anywhere to be found,

yet hunger for a hunt remains.

Tagline: A hero must choose — 

between starving or bartering one’s own

skin. Plot: Amidst the solar famine, bio-

electric studies revealed melanin’s subtle

charge — the brown population gone

mad from being sapped like CopperTops.

Imagine The Matrix without the extra-

terrestrial machines. Imagine that among us

there have lived men churning statistics,

devising a human harvest, a brutal method

to subsist off fellow men and leave their bones

for the gnawing of next century’s mutts.