American Roulette

Narrated by Stanley Barkan

New York

If things go on like this

Cockroaches will inherit the earth

They are actually just waiting

Upsidedown in hidden corners

For us to fuck up even worse

And when we do

They’ll just throw off their disgusting disguises

and come right out in the open

larger than life

and march down the boulevards

like live tanks

spraying stored-up DDT

which was sprayed at them for years

and which they’ve saved up

for just such an occasion

as the end of our world

when the Jupiter Effect for instance

in 1982

triggers California earthquakes

far worse than 1906

which naturally cause every nuclear plant

West of the Rockies

To crack their reactor cores

and leak live white death

over all

which really shouldn’t bother anybody at all

for after all we were assured it wouldn’t happen

by the San Francisco Chronicle and

Allied Chemical and Bankamerica Corporation and

Atlantic Richfield and DuPont Nemours and Kaiser Industries

and General Motors and Exxon and PGE and Standard Oil

and U.S. Steel and Westinghouse and Bechtal and

General Electric and Ford and dozens of other

national and multinational corporations

who contributed a total of at least

three million dollars

to defeat the California anti-nuclear proposition

and hide from us the facts

that there is still no known and approved

 method of storing atomic wastes and that

pure Plutonium really isn’t dangerous at all

and that live reactors can’t really leak at all

especially on the San Andreas Fault

And anyway the fault lies in our stars

and  not in our selves at all