Latter Days
In these latter days, as we blithely sip cocktails beneath a boiling November sun;
Where the light is hot and low and lurid, sickly in a tangerine sky;
In these latter days, when it takes so many chemicals to make us feel remotely human;
And we’re so grateful for the table scraps they toss us;
In these latter days, when we casually burn our sole resource down to the ground;
When we’ve pretty much just given up with so much left undone;
In these latter days, which are inexplicable to children;
And all children are the offspring of fools;
In these latter days, where any brief voice of reason is quickly smothered in lucre;
Where the only sound the airwaves carry is the flutter of paper blown by plutocrats;
In these latter days, where parents whore out their children, not in black midnight alleys, but in the full mad glow of the national myth;
Where the dumb and venal rule, and the quavering smart are purchased like collectibles;
In these latter days, where we refuse to know for sure the things we all know for sure;
Where we hunker down alone each night in the blue screen glow;
Where ignorance is rewarded, and culture is a mockery of itself;
In these latter days, where the weight of a crumbling empire teeters on the overloaded shopping carts of the homeless;
In these latter days of death and circuses;
In these latter days, which no one dares call the last days;
Where love seems a long-ago memory, compassion a cruel joke;
In these latter days, there are no saints, only killers;
And every killer is a suicide.
kjb - 9.20.12
