Western Hemisphere

This grief which pours from living mists when finding sense to make a choice or see the world beyond warmish lies of happy times and pancake Saturday with the kids.

This wail that speaks for every act that cannot stop the evil deeds, or thrash the happy homes of soccer moms who subsidize their lives and fatherless children.

This contempt at men who cast their lot, their hormones quell a woman’s hope that who she found might be unlike the one before yet men dispose, the hunt proceeds through clubs and cubicles of your town.

This ardor for a packaged past when men in hats drove cars with fins amid the hum of vacuum tubes, their wives who cooked each meal and concealed their hopes or dreams while knowing molls would bed their mate in custom to the times.

This rankling at a suffragette in new-age garb who speaks in tongues of victim’s pain, she blames in lingo of elite white women that filter research to their purpose and claim that all men beat their wives.

This loathing for the left and right who account to every class, they sell their wares at pace with blinding speed and news becomes a broker’s wage as revenue decides the truth.

This fury at voyeuristic youth, they vote in weekly droves to coronate a piss-poor singer but don’t show up at polls that count for men who make war for oil in far off lands.

This balking at religious groups marching against gays who build a committed life, “protect the children” claims abound yet divorce is owned by those who dwell beneath the shadow of churches in your town.

This despair at costing every act of human good when wasted people sleep in filth beneath a bridge or walk in staggered lines of shame, the booze has claimed their worth to clustered groups who share the needle beneath the clock at City Hall.

Tenements contrast the housing boom where middle classes drive SUV’s and children raised in day care forget the names of parents when they reach their teenage years.

Shopping malls proclaim our wealth while HIV makes no distinction between rich or poor and straight men succumb to a “gay man’s disease”.

Blurred by visions of crashing planes, collapsing towers sear our collective soul, quickly replaced by drive-thru pursuits, ignorant of past sacrifice, unfettered by the shackles of want.

Old men mullahs send young men to their deaths and video tape cryptic messages that seize upon a fattened world’s fears.

Those whose lives beneath our bombs burn with vengeance, cloaked in the language of martyrdom, steeped in the brine of hatred while poppies blow in Afghanistan.

This sadness at what we’ve become, symbols of decline, maxed out lives on borrowed money, this weeping at our bliss.

This wondering at the fading memory of what we might have been and what is yet to come.