Goodbye, Chryslerpoet.

Hello, radioactiveart.

Here’s the poem from which the name is taken.

The radio today
brings me the story
of a sculptor who makes his work
from radioactive waste.

I sit back amazed
and listen to a doomed voice
in full cry
on behalf of his art.

He has his
Nuclear Materials Handler’s License Number
tattooed on the back of his neck.
He has the trace of his every statue in his blood.

He builds his work
in the center of a military reservation
in Washington State
in a room

that will be
off limits to critics
for
ten thousand years.

He makes sculptures
from the tools and scraps
used in making nuclear weapons.
Someone, he says, has to make them beautiful.

He says it is a privilege
to do this
and the energy of the sun
closes around him

and the energy of the earth
rises from below his feet
and he stands at the center
of our storm.

And he will die,
sooner rather than later,
having given up his life to make art
and counting it a privilege to have done so.

And his sculptures, the ones
I will never see?
They made me
give up my day job.

They make me want to
fly low over volcanoes
to feel that heat
and bring it back with me on a legal pad.

It makes me weep
to think I’ve wasted so much time —
to think that we’ve all wasted
so much time.