The Last Great Invention Poem by Kevin Patrick

Homo Sapiens;
Ingenious innovators
With the capacity
to build marvels
Of great sophistication
Unparalleled to stature
Of any known rival
They’ve build bridges,
Highways, skyscrapers
Networks of concrete
Arteries and capillaries
With cities sprawled
Outwards expanding
Exponentially
As electric spider web
Xanadu pulsating
Zeitgeist of the modern
Utopia.


They’ve made bounds
In progress in incalculable
Measures, mastering flight,
telecommunications,
computer engineering the
refinement of petroleum based
products all with a single century
and lifespan of a Galápagos tortoise.


They have conquered
the cruelest environments
from the sub-Sahara to the Antarctic
and have even made small
steps into the frontiers of space
And have set foot on satellites
And built probes to discover
The secrets of the cosmological

They’ve split the atom
And cracked the genome
Brought in the nuclear age
And the era of evolution
All within the single stroke
Of a cosmic millisecond

Cured diseases thought incurable
Vanquished Smallpox, and typhoid
Captured light waves and radio
Made automobiles and submarines
Build Pyramids in Giza
And International Space Stations
And have even broken the sound barrier

And yet
for all these great marvels
We still have nothing as advanced
As toilet paper