Day of the Machines

I was looking for a job today.

Traveled an ungodly amount of miles.

The bosses nodded, then shook their heads

With their little tiny bosses’ smiles.

“Ain’t got no place for you around here,

Just the way it stands here about, pal,

All these services you say you do,

We got a machine that does that now.”

Suppose you tell me if you can sell

Me a machine to feed my kiddies.

Have you got an electric switch box

That can soothe or gives love or pities?

Or suckle with automated milk?

Gives comfort with a cloth surrogater?

Educate them with wires here and there,

With an atomic emotion regulator?

You wind up these workers each morning

And pay them with grease and gas and oil,

But where do the people go then, bud?

Beneath the spade and under the soil.

Someday the great oceans will dry up.

Trees will wilt and die for lack of drink.

This forest will be a desert haunted

By a lingering lonely clunk...clink.

One giant machine puffing, huffing

Its groans and moans across a dead land.

It’ll move and quake and snort and cry

One rusty wish for a human hand.

Five fingers of flesh will it creak for

To pour cool lubricant on its cam,

To allow it rest from overheat

And let the hot pistons cease their ram.

But it will grind its last scratchy breath,

Then clink-clank-clunk into a junk heap.

But where will the people be by then?

Buried by the backhoe in final sleep.

I was looking for a job today.

Traveled an ungodly amount of miles.

The bosses nodded, then shook their heads

With their little tiny bosses’ smiles.