Ketchup
A child scratches a spacecraft in the dust,
He does not call it a 'spacecraft'
because it is 1911. The Colt Firearm Company
has patented the first reliable semi-automatic pistol;
it does not look like any other handgun.
Decades earlier, Karl Drais invents
the meat-chopping machine.
Delmonico's has long served breakfast steaks.
All at once and singularly, an ethnic sandwich
becomes the 'hamburger'.
New shapes feed bodies and minds;
inevitably, there are consequences.
ideas are left over - like ketchup.
Meat fueled notions activate ray-guns;
cattle are mutilated in Idaho.
In front of his Osaka home, the boy
drops his stick, stares open-mouthed at the dirt.
Things get messy. Mushrooms and red sauce.
Millions of people are annihilated
by atomic meat-chopping machines.
The boy survives, has a son of his own.
The child finds a way
to contain the machines inside a computer-game
called, 'Space Invaders'.
Tomohiro Nishikado does not like ground meat.
Ketchup is now often dispensed in small packets.
It is eaten with fast food while playing war-games.
Unfortunately, there is residue,
ideas escape. Flatulent cows cause a global warming;
civilization cannot eat them fast enough.
New improved meat-chopping machines are activated
by computers;
there is collateral ketchup.
The 1911 colt pistol is still popular.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2019
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