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
