They’ve Stripped the Forest for Babble
Reams and reams
The black-ink symbols innundate
Flooding consciousness with printed words
that possess
Definitions but know no meaning
Tectonics,
Aardvarks,
political history of Byzantine hydraulics.
Dewey decimal has run rampant
Chasing, haunting, even lurking
in the restroom
Parasitically clinging to the walls
Stark and blatant waste or frivolous gaud
Venus dies --
--
-- nonsensical nausea
The ice-age is returning
— Zumwalt (1974)
zumpoems 
Comments on: "They’ve Stripped the Forest for Babble" (5)
the trees are talking? their legacy lives on in our books? save the trees the need to be spliced into our storylines and go type on a computer
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p.s. that last comment was not meant to be harsh. it was just my initial reaction to the poem. i say that any reaction at all is a good thing, but then what do i know? I am a super rookie to the blogosphere.
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seasidenoel,
Thanks for the 2 comments! (This is one of my all-time favorite Zumwalt poems! It contains those elements that are the hallmark components of most later Zumwalt poems: irreverence, clever and/or catchy title, humor, irony and meaning at two or more levels — one at the obvious level and at least one at a inferred, implied or symbolic level.)
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Great poem!
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very truthful words.
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