Poisoned Apple Poem by Val Morehouse

“It is also well known within the nuclear power industry, that minor accidents occur on a regular basis due to human error or purposeful sabotage.”___ Kevin Briggs, Director, U.S. Disaster Preparedness Institute,2001.


Complacency is its trigger. “Clean” its alias. Money its game.
Just what the NRC ordered, an elemental PR blooms fresh from a facelift,
memory airbrushed, history sliced, diced and painted with hot lipstick for the close-up.
But the agency built this one right on a fault line, sited in the onshore wind.
Rising clouds remind you of something once seen.

Remember that petrified forest of stacks pluming steam at the horizon?
Running through the body was one faulty valve, veins blocked and
spewing hot water as needles, voodoo chicken feet, flirted and pecked at the
radioactive effluvium, eating right through that fabled red zone and beyond.
Klaxons invited everyone to join the party, evacuation, melt down, irradiation.

Now, on-duty drones caught on video sleep their shift sitting up,
palming those same seeds inside this bright apple, tossing off cores
that phosphoresce, sub-atomic worm pellets glowing blue.
The pyrotechnic spawn keeps piling up just waiting to sprout.
Something simple as a weather sock can read its direction.

Deep inside this cement block lives a wild power that never sleeps.
Still in charge are those same little men whose wives have
yet to get them to take out the garbage. Remember?
Pretense is the fat boy dying to hatch again in this neutron nest.
Twenty-nine years and not a damned thing changed.