Icing On The Cake

 

That is all I want to be

 

The icing on the cake

Sweet and tasty

Brightly colored

With sprinkles

Under a brilliant

Warm candle flame

 

Unfortunately

My awareness

Tells me I am

So much more

Than the sum

Of my parts

 

I am

 

The warm candle flame

As the gigantic solar sphere

Giving heat and light

To grow canes of sugar

Also, evaporating oceans

Causing clouds to rain

 

Or the corn growing skyward

To the nuclear explosions

Millions of miles away

To be harvested by me

Then processed unnaturally

Into high fructose corn syrup

 

All near the dairy farm where

As a cow, over fed and

Undernourished, am contrapted

To an automated machine

Extracts painfully the ingredients

Of butterfat and milk

 

Piped off to processors

Pumped into purifiers

Driven to distributors

Packaged to profitability

Marketed to the masses

Crammed into containers

 

Am the student engineer

Designing the “advanced”

Version of the harvesters

Milking machine,  pumps

Pipes, conveyor belts, printers

Testers, trackers and time tweaking

 

Also the steelworker making

The iron for the oil rig and drill bits

The captain and ship braving the sea

Docking at the refinery to make into

Plastics for packaging, diesel for power

Gas for cars,  asphalt to drive on

 

All that coming together at different

Times on different days arriving at

The bakery to be mixed and made

On the morning shift dawn breaking

Cake covering creamy concoction

To be the icing on the cake

 

I just

Want to

Be the

Icing

On the

Cake