Scrap Yard Baby

I am a scrap yard baby. Born in the tangle of conduit and wire, day by day for tomorrow. The other half looks down upon my home and notices the animals crawling around in violence and despair. I look down at them, eyes bulging in a slow strangulation by cashmere scarfs. They snuffle, shuffle, and move on. I bound along in my freedom. My chains do not tie me down, they sell. Precious metals and processes and sorting. The industrial hum machine churns, grinds, destroys waste, spitting out rollers and units that no longer draw the wealth that is required to meet the money mark. Money bleeds in the streets in an economic trickle that is caught in little credit unions by the crafty men in their blue collars. I rake in the copper wire and aluminum buss bars, hording my newly discovered wealth in dreams of financial stability. My skin is of cast iron, seasoned with decades upon my years of oil and rust.

The environmental credit collector came today, a hermit crab emerging from his shinny hard hat. How obtuse he appears in a pair of white gloves, grouping around for power using only a book of legal codes and his dull wits. Stumbling inside big brown boots, jeans tucked in. How their eyes intrigue me. Online training manuals scroll behind his eyes, memorized but not comprehended. Dead pan delivery and not a hesitation of thought or sincerity. Eyes grey and crooked from generations of poor breeding. To see the long arm of the law squash success, they understand failure and crave all more ever. It is better to wallow than weep.  

The screech of the barn owl cast from the hollow head, a terrible sound. The elation of soul. His father worked for the IRS his mother tackled the world one parking tickets at a time. What an uncanny resemblance. “Good job boy, somebody must conquer the evil!” A violation of the law gleamed in his eyes. “WASTE OIL” written in bright ride letters across a 55-gallon drum raised its trunk and bellowed. Damn ivory hunters. “Violation” he demanded as he pointed his stubby little boy finger at the victim. The barrel was cleaner than his boots, what could possibly be the issue? He continued to mutter violation far over his breath, spinning the word around his brain and blurting it out upon each smooth rotation. With the only tool familiar to his soft hands, his pen left its holster. “’Used oil’ stored in hazardous container. Maximum fine.”