Poem of the...whatever

While doing my poetry midterm I stumbled across this little beauty:

Ugly men on TV were talking about global warming.
One in particular looked like the spawn of rocks.
I wrote a letter to the various Harvards and MITs,

Dear Serious Sirs,

R & D the sexy mask ASAP if you want us hot
for the idea of giving up the living rooms
of our cars. Carbon dioxide this, albedo that:
where's the hubba hubba? And why only dudes?
My mother's not a man and she knows
to turn off the stove, you should see my wife
in a bikini when she says, "This eclipse
brought to you by coal." Everyday, TV
injects our eyes with pretty,
and then you come along selling apocalypse
and give us the Nebbish Kings of Doom.
Where is it written the mugs of scientists
have to be Golden Mean challenged? Packaging.
Don't stare at pictures of but read McLuhan.
The first impression when dispensing depression
shouldn't be ouch, now should it? If ugly's
all people have to live for, they won't stop driving
from the bedroom to the den. Beauty. It's all around us
except, you know, when you guys show up.

My wife said this was cruel and that she never
wears a bikini while discussing diffraction.
We were planting azaleas on our roses at the time,
doing our part to move the carbon load from the air
to our gardens. We'd already converted our skin
to solar panels, our breathing to wheezing.
You shouldn't call people with advanced degrees ugly,
she said, their feelings were raised in a lab.
It was a beautiful day. The desert
was still some decades west of us, and Canadians,
realizing hockey was at risk, had shot their pick-ups
and even the Zambonis. We can walk, they said,
we have the tools, which made Americans
look for our legs. We found them in the backs
of our closets. It was weird at first, using the body
to get the body around. Then someone mentioned
that you can hum, you can think while doing this,
and the air sounds better since, and now,
when we say, "I was just thinking," it's almost true.
~~~~~~~~

By Bob Hicok