Kevin Meaux - Myths of Electricity: A Letter to Nikola Tesla

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

Myths of Electricity: A Letter to Nikola Tesla

For John Wood

My cousin once claimed
he saw a tractor's axle
magnetized by lightning; I've heard too
of field hands found scorched,
the coins and keys fused in their pockets --
heard how splintered bolts
can burn a person's silhouette into the wall
or sizzle through miles of pipe and powerline
to set whole towns ablaze.

No wonder you bowed to such a god,
believing clouds housed fires brighter than Christ --
but what terrible and radiant angel did you invoke
when voltage arced from the spinning coil?

Jehovah gorged Himself on holy madmen
until their limbs went thin as kindling sticks.
How were you different from them? -- penniless,
half-starved in your apartment and talking to phantoms.

You often said the soul, like breathing,
is a function of the flesh,
said the body's mysteries veil mere machinery.
Yet you bent to the shimmering scripture of science,
saw a heaven that crackled with static and starlight --
and you paid, just like all those raving saints,
the cost of conjuring your insatiate god.