In sight of the brown, sun-graven shimmer
of Columbia’s Cauca river, on a village road,
Ibes Trujillo–who once defused a blasting hydro-dam
out of love, he said,
of the earth and flowing water–
was kidnapped, hacked, and bulleted
to death
(his body gone)
by machine-gun men
who flood the region weekly
like a plague, the ex- pert monitor proclaims,
of blind extermination–
a story only told in flashes,
as the still crash- landing cameras
pivot now
to the far northwest,
where one
teardrop-driven CEO
has broken down and burst the waves,
as the moon-grey, twitching lips
of Elon Musk repeat the recent revelation:
that to build
a human bus to Mars
and keep the massing Model 3 on track,
this year
the Tesla head forgot
his birthday night entirely–
no rest, he
nearly wept on-air,
no friends, no nothing