ARTIFICE

seoul cooks
the city streets sway and throb in the heat
pedestrians sizzle like sausages in a pan
huge fat-bodied dragonflies hover lazily above the scene
surveying the pavements
beside the eight-lane traffic blur
dino-insects in an alien landscape
this is a positive sign
of nature not yielding
to the suffocating encroachment of man's artifice
they will be here
long after all this concrete
after all these poison-spewing machines
have been reclaimed by mother earth
and what of the humans
who consider themselves so clever
but have become a race of icaruses?
oh the wax is melting, my seeds
and the sun is burning
can daedelus find a better way
of harnessing his inventions
or will he let his beloved son
plummet to the earth?