The good news,
All empires eventually fall.
And this one – just a flea on the back of history.
A short poem about consumption.
A half-baked idea by a drunk in a dingy bar.
America the beautiful dressed like a tramp, walking rain soaked streets on a cold winters evening. The smell of fresh garbage in the air.
And we try to shield the children’s faces as she slowly walks past us; her torn fish-net stockings, her dark mascara running down her pimpled face, her dirty bra worn as a shirt, her broken high-heel that gives her a silly limp, the smell of her whiskey breath.
Some men and woman don’t feel the slightest sympathy. “She brought this on herself,” they say.
“Shouldn’t we help,” cry the bleeding hearts, who repeatedly molested her as a young child, who turned her out on the streets with crocodile tears.
And all the priests and politicians take turns in a sleazy motel or in the backseat of a car parked in the woods by the side of the road.
America, that spoiled rotten kid, who got everything he wanted; the expensive sneakers, the big screen tv’s, the trips to Europe, all the latest brands.
He’s failing out of school…
Throwing tantrums over the color of his new car, a gift for his birthday.
He’ll crash it racing up broadway, texting his friends, spitting on people who don’t look like him. It doesn’t matter…
The police come with cotton-candy and chauffeur him off to a holding room until high priced lawyers start throwing presidents around like leaves on a windy November day.
America, the dirty water of flint has rotted your brain, your soldiers are dying at home, you’ve maxed-out your credit cards, you’ve degraded yourself ….and now you’re embarrassed?!?!
America, a constant debate about nothing,
Arguing over breadcrumbs, while the thieves run off with your future, taking your children and laughing in your face.
America, where is George Washington?
He’s dead and buried.
Just a ghost in a history book that’s burning in a barn-fire in a dark city street in the middle of the heartland, coast to coast, east and west, north and south.